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THE 



German Soldier 



IN THE 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



J. G. ROSENGARTEN. 



BY 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
1886. 



ET/Zf 
.Q3 7TS/ 



Copyright, 1886, by J. G. Rosengarten. 




$n jftfteinotg 



ADOLPH G. ROSENGARTEN, 

Major 15th Pennsylvania (Anderson) Cavalry, 



Born in Philadelphia, December 29, 1838 ; Killed in Battle at Stone 
River, Tennessee, December 29, 1862. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The substance of the following pages was read 
before the Pionier Verein at the hall of the German 
Society, in Philadelphia, April 21, 1885. It was 
printed with some changes in the United Service 
Magazine of New York, in the numbers for June, 
July, and August, 1885, and it was translated and 
printed in German in full in the Nebraska Tribune, 
in successive issues, between June 20th and October 
27, 1885, — the last number being a supplementary 
article by the translator, Fr. Schnake, on the German 
Soldiers of the Border States. It was subsequently 
published in a pamphlet of forty-nine pages by J. 
B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, for the Pionier 
Verein. That edition is exhausted, and in reply 
to numerous applications, showing interest in the 

subject, it is now reprinted with many corrections 

1* 5 



6 PREFATORY NOTE. 

and considerable additions. For these the author 
is indebted most of all to the Deutsche Pionier of 
Cincinnati and to the editor, H. A. Ratterman, the 
best authority on all subjects concerning the Germans 
of the United States, — and among others to Mr. F. 
Melchers, of the Deutsche Zeitung, Charleston, South 
Carolina ; Mr. Herman Dieck, of the German Demo- 
krat, Philadelphia ; General Lewis Merrill, U.S.A. ; 
Colonel John P. Nicholson, Dr. J. de B. W. Gardiner, 
U.S.A.; Prof. O. Seidensticker, of the University of 
Pennsylvania, and Mr. George M. Abbot, of the 
Philadelphia Library, — his " Bibliography of the Civil 
War in the United States" is indispensable for a 
student of our military history. Whatever there is of 
merit or interest in these pages is largely due to the 
assistance thus liberally given. With further aid in 
the way either of corrections or additions, which 
will be gladly received and gratefully acknowledged, 
the author of this sketch hopes that he may here- 
after be enabled to make it better worth the interest 
of the reader and the importance of the subject. 

J. G. R. 
Philadelphia, April 21, 1886, 
532 Walnut Street. 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER 



IN THE 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



The share of the Germans in the wars of the 
United States is by no means limited to that of the 
Rebellion. From the very outset of their settlement 
in the country they always stood ready to take their 
place in its defence. On the borders of what was 
then the West, the early German immigrants were 
steady in their support of the British flag against 
their hereditary enemies, the French. This was 
natural enough, for many of the Germans who first 
came to this country did so in order to seek refuge 
from the French invaders, who rode rough-shod 
over their humble homes in the districts of Ger- 
many devastated by French soldiers. Even among 

7 



8 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

those who came here to find a new home in which 
they could worship God in their own way, while 
they sympathized with the Quakers in their doctrine 
of not bearing arms voluntarily, the German blood 
did not easily accommodate itself to the doctrine 
of non-resistance, and when they could not make 
friends of the Indians by peaceful means, the German 
settlers did not hesitate to take up arms in defence 
of their homes. The Germans of Pennsylvania and 
New York responded freely to the summons to de- 
fend their new country against the French and their 
allies, the Indians. They gave freely of their men 
and their means to the cause of liberty in the war 
of the Revolution. They took a full share in the 
war of 1812, and in the Mexican war. Finally, 
wherever the Germans were strongest in number, 
they were represented in even more than propor- 
tionate strength in the forces raised for the defence 
of the Union. From New York and Pennsylvania 
they went forth in great strength in regiments and 
individually. They saved Missouri to the Union, 
and Ohio and Illinois and Indiana and Wisconsin 
and Kansas may well point with pride to their 
German citizens as foremost in doing their duty 
in war and in peace. The story of their achieve- 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. g 

ments in war is a subject on which little has hitherto 
been said. 

The Germans from the Palatinate had been scat- 
tered on the frontier, facing the Indians and the 
French in New York and Pennsylvania. The early 
settlers in South and North Carolina and Georgia 
were also largely recruited from the Germans, and 
they, too, had still another hostile force to meet, 
that of the Spanish troops and Indians, whose 
masters were unwilling to see their territory threat- 
ened and diminished. The good Moravians gave 
up their settlements in Georgia rather than fight, 
and thus lost the fruits of some years of labor in 
their schools and churches. The sturdy Protestants 
from the Palatinate were not afraid to take up arms 
in defence of their own homes, and in a very short 
time the British government, which had brought 
them here as an act of benevolence, found a good 
return in the services rendered by the German 
settlers as peacemakers with the Indians, and when 
necessary, as soldiers against the French and the 
Spanish and their native allies. There was, indeed, 
quite a characteristic jealousy of them on the part 
of their unwarlike neighbors in Pennsylvania, and 
not a little of the hostility which marked the 



IO THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

treatment of the early German settlers in New York 
was due to their sturdy indifference to those, both 
Dutch and English, the great land-owners, who 
would have controlled them and used them as 
feudal serfs. They acknowledged their allegiance 
to the crown, and gladly served it. They refused 
to submit to the tyranny of great landlords, and 
on that account soon left New York to find per- 
manent homes under the kindlier sway of the Penns. 
Pennsylvania made Conrad Weiser colonel of a 
regiment of volunteers from the county of Berks, 
and Governor Morris, in 1755, gave him command 
over the second battalion of the Pennsylvania regi- 
ment, consisting of nine companies. In the defence 
of the borders against the Indians and the French, 
forts were built by the German settlers above 
Harrisburg, at the forks of the Schuylkill, on the 
Lehigh, and on the Upper Delaware. The Hon. 
Daniel Ermentrout, in his address at the German 
Centennial Jubilee in Reading in June, 1876, de- 
scribes the Tulpehocken massacre in 1755, just 
after Braddock's defeat, the barbarities perpetrated 
in Northampton County in 1756, and the attack 
on the settlements near Reading in 1763. Against 
these forays the Germans under Schneider and 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. IX 

Hiester made a stout resistance. As early as 171 1 
a German battalion, mainly natives of the Palatinate, 
was part of the force, a thousand strong, which was 
to take part in the expedition to Quebec. While the 
Quakers of Pennsylvania kept the government from 
exerting its full strength, the Germans, in spite of 
their peace principles, stood up stoutly for their own 
homesteads. Berks, Bucks, Lancaster, York, and 
Northampton were then the frontier counties, and 
from them came the men who filled the German 
regiments and battalions of the Revolutionary war. 
The sufferings inflicted on the German settlers were 
not without their influence in inspiring their de- 
scendants with the patriotism which made them 
good soldiers both in the Revolution and in the 
war of the Rebellion. 

At the outbreak of the old French war, the 
British government, under an act of Parliament 
passed for the purpose, organized the Royal Amer- 
ican Regiment for service in the colonies. This 
force was to consist of four battalions, of one 
thousand men each. Fifty of the officers were to 
be foreign Protestants, while the enlisted men were 
to be raised principally from among the German 
settlers in America. The immediate commander, 



1 2 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

General Bouquet, was a Swiss by birth, an English 
officer by adoption, and a Pennsylvanian by natu- 
ralization. This last distinction was conferred on 
him in compliment, and as a reward for his ser- 
vices in his campaigns in the western part of 
Pennsylvania, where he and his Germans atoned for 
the injuries that resulted from Braddock's defeat 
in the same border region.* 

The first colonel of the regiment was Lord 
Loudoun, and the four battalions were commanded 
by Stanwix, Duffeaux, Jeffereys, and Provost. Lord 
Howe was commissioned colonel in 1757, when he 
was first ordered to America. The regiment itself 
still exists as the Sixtieth of the line of the British 
army. Bouquet himself died in 1765, at Pensacola, 
just after he had received the thanks of the As- 
sembly of Pennsylvania for his victory at Bushy 
Run in 1763. It was to the Germans of his force 
that is due much of the credit of this action, mak- 
ing amends for the disaster of Braddock's defeat. 
A chaplain of this regiment, who shared in its 

* One of the best evidences of the interest taken in this organ- 
ization is the sermon preached in Christ Church, Philadelphia, by 
the Rev. Dr. William Smith, which was printed at the request of 
the colonel and officers. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. l ^ 

operations at Louisburg and on the frontiers, the 
Rev. Michael Schlattler, died at Chestnut Hill, 
Philadelphia, in 1790, in the enjoyment of a pension 
from the British government, although he had 
proved himself a good patriot in the Revolutionary 
war. His descendants were well known as success- 
ful merchants in Philadelphia, while his own mem- 
ory is honored by a biography giving an account 
of his varied services to the Church. 

But from the Germans of Pennsylvania there 
went forth an influence among the Indians more 
potential in saving the country from desolating 
border warfare than soldiers or fortifications. While 
the French were striving to make the Indians their 
allies in war, the Germans, and especially the Mo- 
ravians, were working successfully to convert the 
savages into peaceful Christians, and make them 
good neighbors, useful and obedient to the author- 
ities, and a strong defence against the inroads of 
their more savage brethren influenced by the French. 
The Moravians sent their members out to preserve 
peace; their knowledge of the Indians and their 
languages, their intercourse and intermarriages, had 
secured the confidence of the untutored savages. 
Parkman, in his last work, " Montcalm and Wolfe 



I a THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

in the French War of 1759," describes at length 
the mission undertaken by Christian Frederick Post 
as envoy to the hostile tribes on the distant Ohio.* 
The Moravians were apostles of peace, and they 
succeeded to a surprising degree in weaning their 
Indian converts from their ferocious instincts and 
warlike habits. Post boldly presented himself among 
those who were still savage, and his first reception 
was by a crowd of warriors, their faces distorted 
with rage, threatening to kill him. Soon after the 
French offered a great reward for his scalp, but 
Post, undaunted, declared to the Indians the coming 
of an army to drive off the French, and in return 
received the promise of the warlike savages to keep 
the peace. After a conference at Easton, Post again 
went on a mission of peace to the tribes of the Ohio. 
The small escort of soldiers that attended him as 
far as the Allegheny, was cut to pieces on its return 

* Frederick Post was a German Moravian, who, as early as 1761, 
settled in what is now Bethlehem Township, Stark County, Ohio, 
where he built a block-house and cleared a few acres of forest, 
and established a mission settlement. The family of Heckewelder 
joined him there, but later settled at Gnadenhutten in Tuscarawas 
County. The site of the former is marked by a few remains of 
the old block-house. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



15 



by a band of the very warriors to whom he was 
carrying his offers of friendship. His overtures 
were accepted, and the Delawares, Shawnees, and 
Mingoes ceased to be enemies. The English sol- 
diers failed by force of arms to accomplish what 
the German missionary had successfully attained. 
Thus the work of the Moravians in their quiet 
home at Bethlehem had enabled their representa- 
tive to gain the friendship and alliance of the In- 
dians, and to weaken the force of the French and 
proportionately strengthen that of the English, and 
this was in no small degree an important factor 
in the final overthrow of the French in America. 

In Kapp's " History of the Early German Settlers 
of New York," we find the names of the first Ger- 
man soldiers, those who bore arms in defence of 
their hardly-won homesteads against the French and 
their allies, the Indians. Among them were the 
Weisers, father and son. The elder, John Conrad, 
born in Wiirtemberg, came to this country a few 
years after his native village was burned by the 
French in their invasion in 1693, and died in Penn- 
sylvania in 1746, where he and other German settlers 
found refuge from the unfair treatment of the wealthy 
New York land-owners. Conrad Weiser, his son, 



j6 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IA THE 

born in 1696 in Germany, came, with his father, as 
a boy to New York, and after a brief experience of 
border-life with the German settlers west of the Hud- 
son, lived with the Indians long enough to be their 
fast friend, and to serve as their intermediary with 
the whites, helping thus to preserve the peace in the 
midst of hostile influences. He died near Reading, in 
1760. As lieutenant-colonel of a Pennsylvania regi- 
ment he shared in the hardships of the " old French 
war," and secured from the allied Indians an affec- 
tion and respect which stood his fellow-Germans in 
good stead in later years. His daughter was the 
wife of the elder Muhlenberg, the first of that name 
to come to this country, and the mother of General 
Muhlenberg of Revolutionary fame. 

As early as 171 1 the elder Weiser had led his 
German countrymen in an expedition to Canada, in 
defence of the English against the French ; and the 
younger Weiser, in 1737, boldly went out among 
the wild tribes of native Indians and successfully 
brought them to make peace with the new settlers. 
In 1748 he penetrated the unknown country west 
as far as the Ohio, and in 1754 he united the friendly 
Indians in a strong alliance, which served very 
greatly to resist the French intrigues and invasions. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. l y 

During the Revolutionary war, while many of the 
Germans of New York were serving in the army, 
their homes and those of their neighbors were 
exposed to the attacks of savage enemies, French 
and Indians rivalling one another in cruelties. The 
German settlers and their families defended them- 
selves with real courage, and the story of their heroic 
deeds well deserves the lasting record that Kapp has 
secured it in his interesting volume. The border 
warfare, of what was then Western New York, 
showed that among the Germans there were many 
stout hearts and strong hands ready to defend their 
lives and to protect their families. Each home was 
a block-house and every fort a gathering-point, yet 
the English were as bitter in repressing the liberty- 
loving Germans as ever the French had been in 
attacking them for their loyalty to England. Even 
when the war ended it was with a sacrifice of lives 
and property that fell heavily on the. German settlers. 
All this, however, was a training and experience that 
helped to make them devoted patriots, and earnest in 
their readiness to sacrifice everything in defence of 
their newly-acquired liberty and independence. 
From the same counties came many regiments into 
the army that helped to defend and preserve the 

2* 



iS THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

Union, and although the distinctive German charac- 
teristics were less marked in New York than in 
Pennsylvania, still a military history of New York 
in the Rebellion, whenever it is written, will show 
that the Germans, descendants of the early Pfaslzers 
and Rhinelanders, who had settled in New York in 
the early part of the eighteenth century, were fully 
alive to the patriotic demand made upon them in the 
middle of the nineteenth century. 

In 1728, the first conflict in Pennsylvania took 
place between Germans and Indians at Majiatawny. 
In 1755, after Braddock's defeat, the Indians attacked 
the Moravian settlements, and all the frontier counties 
were ravaged by them. Franklin himself headed a 
regiment in defence of Pennsylvania, in which many 
Germans served, and he gave them hearty praise for 
their bravery. When another outbreak occurred in 
1763, Bouquet with his regiment of Royal Americans, 
officered as well as manned by Germans, put it down. 
The Germans of Charleston, South Carolina, organ- 
ized in 1775 a Fusilier Company, which served 
through the Revolution and is still in existence. 
In Georgia many of the early German settlers en- 
listed under General Wayne in the Revolutionary 
army. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



19 



The German soldier has gone through all the 
phases of history in our brief experience of war. 
In the Revolution the Hessians became a by-word, 
and yet they were rather the victims of political 
evils than willing partisans. Not the least of Fried- 
erich Kapp's great services to both the country of his 
adoption and that of his nativity, is his series of 
admirable works on the German soldiers of the Revo- 
lution, on the one side, his account of the dealings 
in them as mercenaries, and on the other, his lives of 
Steuben and De Kalb. Much of his material has 
supplied that for later authors, notably Green and 
Lowell. Von Elking has furnished the story of 
Riedesel's life, the commander of the German forces 
in the British army. The " Memoirs of Mme. von 
Riedesel" will always be read with interest as a pic- 
ture of the times of the Revolution, both in Germany 
and in America. 

The material for a statistical account of the Ger- 
man forces engaged in America has been found in 
the well-ordered and well-preserved archives of the 
various German states from which they came. For 
our " War of the Rebellion" such data are not easily 
attainable. The story covers too vast a field to be 
briefly told. The method of raising troops in the 



20 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

separate States obliges an inquirer to make an ex- 
amination of the printed records of each State, and 
these are so voluminous and so unsystematic, that 
it is almost impossible to get at the facts of the 
nativity of the soldiers serving in their organizations. 
Indeed, there still remains to be written a history 
of the part of New York in the war, and in those 
bulky volumes of war records of States already 
printed it is hard to say which is the least satis- 
factory on this point. 

The Seven Years' war made the name of Germany 
and its great leader, Frederick, popular throughout 
the colonies. Town, village, and wayside inn dis- 
played the well-known sharp features and high 
shoulders as a sign, and the " King of Prussia" was 
a favorite name for taverns — then of more impor- 
tance than to-day — on all the high-roads between 
the great towns.* Steuben was one of Frederick's 
own veterans, and as such he was heartily welcomed, 

* Sauer, the Germantown printer, published in 1761 a translation 
into German of Dihvorth's " Life and Heroic Deeds of Frederick 
the Great," a volume of 288 pages. Rabbi FranckePs Berlin Thanks- 
giving Sermon on the King's Victory of December 5, 1757, was re- 
printed in Philadelphia in 1763, in a translation by an unknown 
hand (Hildeburn's Issues of the Pennsylvania Press, No. 6725). 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 2 \ 

when French officers of high rank were coldly re- 
ceived. His zeal, his ability, his success, were shown 
in the improved discipline and instruction of the 
provincial troops. He was so good a soldier that 
he knew just how to use the material at hand, and 
to make good soldiers and good officers of what 
had hitherto been an undisciplined mass. Steuben's 
Regulations long remained the manual of the United 
States army and its militia. It was not only that 
he made the army successful in the field, but the 
discipline he had introduced so effectually cultivated 
the sense of duty and subordination, that a weak and 
impotent Congress, which had x utterly failed of its 
duty to provide for its soldiers, was still able to 
disband peacefully an injured and irritated army. 
That he spent the rest of his life in waiting for 
justice is not fairly compensated for by the posthu- 
mous honors that have been paid his memory since 
his death, and the debt of gratitude that America 
owes to Steuben is one that can never be fully dis- 
charged. 

Much has been said and written in disparagement 
of the German mercenaries serving in the British 
army in the war of independence. It must be borne 
in mind that in England itself the wickedness of 



22 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

thus hiring men against their consent was sharply 
denounced. Holland and Russia absolutely refused 
to accept the tempting offers of Great Britain. King 
George, himself a German sovereign, mildly pro- 
tested against thus using his Hanoverian troops. 
Frederick the Great sternly forbade the enlistment 
of any of his subjects or permission to any of the 
petty German princes to take their soldiers through 
his territories to ports of shipment to England for 
America. Schiller stigmatized the trade in men in 
his " Kabale und Liebe," while Kant went still further 
and embraced the cause of the American colonist 
with all the energy of his great intellect. Klop- 
stock and Lessing spoke in the same strain, al- 
though in lower tones. Frederic Kapp puts the total 
of twenty-nine thousand one hundred and sixty-six 
as the number furnished by Brunswick, Hesse-Cassel, 
Hanau, Waldeck, Anspach, and Anhalt, and of these 
only seventeen thousand three hundred and thirteen 
returned to their native country. How many of the 
remainder stayed in their new home to become 
fathers of American citizens cannot be easily ascer- 
tained, yet it is more than a tradition that in Penn- 
sylvania, in Maryland, in Virginia, in North Caro- 
lina, wherever there were German settlers ready to 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 2 $ 

aid the newcomers, the sick, the wounded, the 
stragglers, the deserters, all found protection and a 
welcome, which insured them prosperity and a better 
livelihood than they had left behind them. Their 
number has been roughly estimated at considerably 
over ten thousand. 

There were many Germans settled in the colonies 
before the Revolution, who cast their fortunes with 
the young republic and shared in the struggle which 
secured independence and union. 

The German Battalion was raised agreeably to a 
resolve of Congress of May 22, 1776, four companies 
in Pennsylvania and four in Maryland, to which was 
added a ninth company by resolve of July 9, 1777. 
The officers were : Lieutenant-Colonel, Ludwick 
Weltener; Major, Daniel Burckhart; Captains, Jacob 
Bunner, Peter Boyer, Charles Baltzel, William Rice, 
Bernard Hubley, Christian Myers, Michael Bayer; 
Captain-Lieutenant, Philip Schrauder; Lieutenants, 
John Weidman, Martin Sugart, Jacob Gremeth, Jacob 
Cramer, Godfrey Swartz, Marcus Young, David Mor- 
gan ; Ensigns, John Weidman, Henry Shrupp, David 
Desenderfer, Henry Spech, Jacob Raboldt, Christian 
Glichner, William Prux, Henry Hehn. 

An independent corps of one hundred and fifty 



24 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

men was raised by resolve of December 5, 1776, of 
which the officers were: Captains, John Paul Schott, 
Anthony Selim. 

In Henry's account of Arnold's campaign against 
Quebec, 1775 (Albany, Munsell, 1877), is a reference 
to the company of riflemen commanded by Captain 
William Hendricks, from Cumberland County, Penn- 
sylvania, " an excellent body of men, formed by na- 
ture as the stamina of an army, fitted for a tough 
and tight defence of the liberties of their country." 
Hendricks " was tall, of a mild and beautiful counte- 
nance, his soul was animated by a genuine spark 
of heroism." He was killed at Quebec, in the same 
attack in which General Montgomery fell, on the 1st 
of January, 1776, and the two heroes were buried 
side by side. Provost Smith, in his oration on Mont- 
gomery, speaks with unstinted praise of the Pennsyl- 
vania riflemen. Their funeral was marked by the 
British officers with every mark of honor. Of Hen- 
dricks's company, raised on the west side of the Sus- 
quehanna, scarcely a dozen names have been res- 
cued from oblivion. Of the flower of the country, 
brave, ardent, and patriotic, and nowise daunted by 
the sufferings of the Arnold campaign, nearly all of 
those who returned safely from it served again in the 



WARS OF THE UN] TED STATES. 2 $ 

Revolution. He is spoken of with equal praise by 
Thayer in his "Journal of the Invasion of Canada in 
1775," edited by Stone, published in Providence, 
Rhode Island, in 1867. 

In Harris's " Biographical History of Lancaster 
County" (Lancaster, 1872), there are many names of 
its German settlers and their descendants who served 
as soldiers, with honor to themselves and credit to 
the race whence they sprang. 

In Hamersly's " Dictionary of the Army," and on 
the register of the army for 1784, there are the 
familiar names of General Steuben, inspector-general, 
and his aide-de-camp, Major William North, and that 
of Major Continental Artillery, Sebastian Bauman, 
captain New York Continental Artillery Company, 
1776, brevet lieutenant-colonel, 1787. 

The following hitherto unprinted letter of De 
Kalb, from the unrivalled collection of Ferdinand 
J. Dreer, Esq., of Philadelphia, is so characteristic 
of that hero, in its manly refusal to accept military 
precedence to Lafayette, that it is well worth publica- 
tion, as showing the noble nature of the man : 

"Bethlehem, 18 Sept r . 1777. 
" Sir, — I have been ever since I had the favour 
your letter by Mr. Secretary Thomson, in a very 

3 



2 6 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

uncertain and fluctuating Situation of mind, be- 
tween the desire of serving in your Army, and the 
apprehension of blame from home. But Congress 
and your Esteem do me too much Honour, not 
to accept your late proposals, if they will grant me 
Several points I think essential to my tranquillity 
and entire satisfaction. 1st. That I may be at Lib- 
erty to give up my Commission if in answer to the 
account I will send to France of my proceedings 
here and my behaviour towards those officers that 
came over with me, in case they were to exclaim 
against my stay, in anyway that could be hurtfull 
to my reputation and honour. 

" 2nd. As to the offer made to me by the Ministry 
of Mr. Thomson to have my Commission done of 
an older date than Marquiss de la Fayette's. I would 
decline it and have my Commission of the same 
day with his. That it may be in my power to 
show my regard for his friendship to me, in giving 
him the Seniority over me in America, in order, too, 
not to disgust him. 

" 3rd. That Congress will be pleased to grant to 
Chev. Dubuysson, a Commission as Lt. Colonel with 
only the pay as a Major, or as my aid de Camp. 

"4th. That they will please to make provision for 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



27 



said Chev. Dubuysson of having the assurance of 
a Pension of 1200 Livres French money or fifty 
Louis d'ors to be paid in France for life if he serves 
this and next Campaign, and which they will aug- 
ment at pleasure if he serves longer and they are 
satisfied with his having done his duty according 
to time and circumstances. 

" 5th. That if Congress are disposed to do any- 
thing of that kind for myself it shall be done at 
their own terms and pleasure. The only thing I 
could wish in that respect, would be to have the 
favour bestowed on my Lady and children in case 
I died in the Continental Army or any other way 
while in their service. 

" On said Conditions I am ready to join the army 
as soon as possible and to go directly to Philadel- 
phia from Lancaster, where I will wait for a Resolve 
of Congress, by Chev. Dubuysson, bearer of this. 

" Another observation I think necessary in regard 
to the immediate Command of a Division. General 
Washington has perhaps friends or deserving officers 
to whom he would give the preference, in such a 
case I should be sorry my coming in did in the 
least cross or prevent his dispositions in this and 
any other respects. I will gladly and entirely 



28 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

submit to his Commands and to be employed as 
he shall think most convenient for the good of the 
Service. If my second aid de Camp I am to chuse, 
chanced to be a foreigner, I should be glad some 
provision was made for him after leaving the service, 
in proportion to his rank as a Major. 

" I depend for the Settling of all these matters to 
the Satisfaction of all parties, on the friendship you 
are so kind to profess for me, and of which I have 
already so many proofs. These new obligations 
cannot increase the respect and high Esteem with 
which I have the Honour to be, 
" Sir, 

" Your most obedient, 

" Humble Servant, 

" Baron De Kalb. 
" Colonel Richard Henry Lee, 

" Member of Congress." 
This is endorsed : 

" Com d to B d War 

" 1 8th & 23d Sept. 1777, acted upon." 

From the same treasure-house of original material 
for history comes the letter from Steuben, written in 
French, from which the following is an extract: 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



2 9 



" Dear Friend 

"I have received your two letters of the 12th and 
20th February, — I would rather have seen you in 
person. I am infinitely obliged to you for your 
news, for every thing which occurs in the army is 
of interest. I am infinitely sorry for your account 
of Col. Bruchs and Major Gils and would be glad 
to help them. To lose such an officer as Bruchs 
would be a real misfortune. I have already spoken 
of it to the President of Congress et je parlerai 
au bon Dieu et au Diable. I would move Heaven 
and Earth to prevent it. We are waiting for news 
from Gibraltar and Charlestown, as the Jews wait 
for the Messiah. I have bet a hat on the fall of 
Gibraltar, but I am afraid I shall win only a night 
cap. Our papers are full of epigrams, abuse, and 
dreams of the late Mr. de Galvan on the American 
army, — his friends want to immortalize him. Let 
me know if North has decided to go beyond Boston, 
for in that case I fear much, — but no, I won't fear 
anything. I hoped to present my compliments to 
Mrs. Washington en route when your last letter 
reported that she had gone. I would like to see 
you in my hermitage, — where I am better quartered 
than since I came to America. I rarely go into the 



3 o THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

city, but my friends come to see me in my cottage. 
I receive visits from European Grandees, such as 
the Prince de Guimene, of the house of Rohan, — 
who claim to be next after the Bourbons in France. 
The Due de Lauzun, the Comte de Gillon, have 
both been here too. Our American Grandees are 
too busy with great affairs to pay visits, but I have 
no pretensions, for I have paid no visit except to 
the President of Congress, nor will I. Yesterday I 
was at a supper and ball given by M. de la Luzerne 
to the newly married Major Moore and his wife, — 
there were eighty persons, and among them many 
pretty women. . . . My fate is not yet decided. 
I have just written to Congress to demand a Com- 
mittee, to which I can submit my uncomfortable 
situation. I get no pay, rations or forage, and I 
live on money I borrow to pay my marketing. My 
case is one of ' to be or not to be,' — I am ready 
for anything. The Secretary of War will find it no 
harder to replace me than the Adjutant-General, 
whose position he offered to several persons of my 
acquaintance. ' Let him go' is the favorite phrase 
of our Secretaries nowadays. I saw Robert Morris 
yesterday, — he seems more affected by the conditions 
of the army than anybody. I hope that after the 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. ^ Y 

ist of January, not only will the subsistence of the 
officers be regularly paid, but that it may be in- 
creased. Say to them that no matter what happens, 
nothing can prevent me from being their advocate. 
... I cannot deal with Lincoln, he has done me 
more harm than he thinks, but I don't want to be 
anybody's enemy, not even his. There are some 
people who are dangerous only as friends, and he 
is one of them, so it is prudent for me to treat him 
with indifference. I was not the aggressor, I sought 
his friendship, and if he had honored me with his 
confidence, my advice would have been better for 
him than that of his friend Cornel. . . . The Prince 
de Guimene wants to make the acquaintance of the 
General in chief, — he said so to me, and if my 
finances do not prevent, I will go with him. Al- 
though he is only a Midshipman on the Frigate, he 
is a young man of the highest nobility in France, — 
a grandson of the Prince de Soubise, who is Mar- 
shal of France. I give you warning, so that in case 
he comes, his air of a little wild boy may not prevent 
you showing him the consideration due to his birth. 
But what nonsense to talk this way in a Republic. 

My respects to the General. 

" Steuben. 

"Belisarius Hall. 
"Nov. the 26th." 



^2 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

The register for 1789 gives, captain First Infantry, 
David Ziegler (late captain First Pennsylvania Conti- 
nental Infantry). In the Indian border warfare be- 
tween 1788 and 1795, a leading figure was that of 
David Ziegler, whose story is typical of that of 
many of our early German soldiers. Born in Heidel- 
berg in 1748, he served in the Russian campaign 
against the Turks under Catharine, until the con- 
quest of the Crimea brought peace. He settled in 
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1775, and as adjutant of 
a Pennsylvania regiment, more than half made up of 
Germans, — the second to enlist under Washington 
for the war, — and as senior captain of the First Penn- 
sylvania Continental Regiment, he won great praise. 
Later on he raised a company for war against the 
Indians in the West, and took part in Clark's expe- 
dition, and was with General Harmar in 1790, and 
with St. Clair in 1791, in command of a battalion 
of regulars. He was made major and temporarily 
assigned command of the army, for six weeks, but 
was led to resign, and was the first mayor of Cin- 
cinnati, where he died in 181 1. The army list for 
1805-6 has, Captain Artillery, Michael Kalteisen, 
who had been distinguished in connection with the 
Charleston (South Carolina) German company. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 33 

Michael Kalteisen was born at Wachtelsheim, 
Wurtemberg, on the 1 8th of June, 1729; in 1762 
he was established in business in Charleston, South 
Carolina, where a large German population had 
already gathered. In 1766, with fifteen of his coun- 
trymen, he established the German Friendly Society 
of that city, and by the time of the Revolution it 
counted a hundred members, and was well enough 
off to advance two thousand pounds to the State 
for defence against the Crown. On the 12th of July, 
1775, he set on foot the plan of a German military 
organization, which under the name of the German 
Fusiliers, by 1776, counted over a hundred Germans 
in its ranks. Its captain was Alexander Gillon, first 
lieutenant Peter Bouquet (brother of the general of 
that name), second lieutenant Kalteisen, ensign 
Gideon Dupont. From the day of their organiza- 
tion they proved themselves true and ardent patriots. 
In 1779 it to °^ P art w i tn the Continental forces 
under Lincoln and the French squadron under 
D'Estaing, in the siege of Savannah, having its cap- 
tain, Scheppert, killed in the same assault in which 
Pulaski fell. The first captain, Gillon, had been 
made captain of the South Carolina fleet in 1779, 
and sent to France to buy three frigates. The 



34 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

Prince of Luxemburg gave him one for three years, 
on a guarantee of its safe return and a fourth share 
of all prize money. He finally led a squadron of 
eighty sail, and took the " Bahamas." He left a son 
who, in 1 8 17, was a member of the Fusiliers. Kal- 
teisen died in 1807, and the hall of the German 
Society, with its tablet in his memory, was destroyed 
by fire in 1864. The Fusiliers, however, still exist, 
and the German Society still perpetuates the useful 
charity set on foot by him. 

Of the general officers of the Continental army, the 
Germans were John De Kalb, F. von de Woedtke, 
F. W. A. Steuben. 

In the pages of that excellent and useful journal, 
Dcr Deutsche Pionier, the organ of the society es- 
tablished under that name to preserve everything 
that relates to the history of the German settlers 
in this country, are found many records of the 
Germans who served the cause of American lib- 
erty, both in the Revolutionary war and in that 
of the Rebellion. Herkimer in New York, and 
Muhlenberg in Pennsylvania, are names that will 
long preserve the memory of the services of the 
first German soldiers in defence of their adopted 
country. The records of the Continental army show 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



35 



that in almost every regiment there were Germans, 
and in those of Pennsylvania, whole regiments, bat- 
talions, and companies organized, officered, and filled 
with Germans, who did good service for their coun- 
try. In the then western wilderness of Kentucky, 
Daniel Boone, with others like himself of German 
birth or descent, did their share in securing Amer- 
ican liberty in their new home. In Virginia, North 
and South Carolina, and Georgia, there were many 
German settlers, and from their number many went 
into the patriot army, sharing its hardships and 
contented with helping to secure the final establish- 
ment of American independence as their full re- 
ward. In Gustav Korner's " Das Deutsche Element 
in den Vereinigten Staaten," Cincinnati, 1880, there 
is a graphic account of the Germans from 18 18 to 
1848, with frequent reference to the earlier, as well 
as the later, Germans who took a distinguished place 
among the soldiers of the young republic in its 
first Revolution, and in its subsequent wars. Her- 
kimer, Lutterloh, and Weissenfels in New York, 
Muhlenberg in Pennsylvania, Michael Kalteisen and 
his associates in the German Fusilier Company of 
Charleston, South Carolina, the oldest military or- 
ganization of the country, established in 1775, are 



36 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



among those who were the first German citizens by 
their sacrifices and their services to secure the right 
to a place in the home of their adoption. 

Friedrich Heinrich Baron von Weissenfels was the 
friend and companion of Washington, Steuben, and 
De Kalb, and his name deserves to be rescued from 
oblivion. Born in Elbing, Prussia, in succession to 
a line of soldiers (his father was major in the 
Swedish army), he served in the Silesian war under 
Frederick the Great, and, like Steuben, won at the 
hands of that royal soldier his decoration and order; 
in 1756 he entered the English service to take part 
in the old French war, was made an officer in the 
Royal American, the Sixtieth of the line, took part 
in the attack on Fort Ticonderoga, and the capture of 
Havana in 1762. He was at the side of Wolfe when 
he fell at Quebec, and served in the same regiment 
as St. Clair. Put on half pay at the close of the war, 
he settled in New York, married a widow Bogart 
there, and had Steuben and Van Courtland as his 
groomsmen. As soon as the colonies began the 
Revolution, casting aside all thought of his own 
interest, he offered his services to the Continental 
Congress; was made captain of a regiment organized 
in New York in 1775, and was brigade-major at 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



37 



Quebec with Montgomery and Worster. In 1776 he 
was made lieutenant-colonel in command of the Third 
Battalion of the Second New York Regiment of the 
line, and was soon promoted to be colonel, serving at 
White Plains and at Trenton, and at the capture of 
Burgoyne, as well as at Monmouth. In 1779 he 
was second in command under Sullivan in an ex- 
pedition against the Indians. He was distinguished 
for his personal gallantry, and was honored by Wash- 
ington and Congress with many marks of grateful 
acknowledgment. He died in New Orleans in 1806, 
poor in purse but rich in glory. His only son died 
in 1798, in Alexandria, Virginia, his widow in 1818, 
and his daughter in 1856. He was the first Vice- 
President of the German Society of New York, with 
Steuben as its President. He was one of the original 
members of the Society of the Cincinnati, and his 
fellow Germans in that organization deserve to be 
chronicled here, to show the appreciation of their 
share in the great work of securing the independence 
of the American republic. 

These original members were : 
Major-General Steuben, who died in 1795. 
Colonel Henry Emanuel Lutterloh, a President of 
the German Society of New York. 



3 g THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

Colonel Nicholas Fish, of New York. 

Colonel Frederick von Weissenfels, of the Second 
New York Regiment. 

Major Sebastian Baumann, died 1803, of the Sec- 
ond New York Artillery Regiment. 

Captain Henry Ticbout, died 1826, First New 
York Regiment. 

Captain George Sytez, First New York Regi- 
ment. 

Lieutenant Peter Anspach, Second New York 
Artillery Regiment. 

Lieutenant Henry Demler, Second New York 
Artillery Regiment. 

Lieutenant Joseph Freilich, Second New York 
Regiment. 

Lieutenant Michael Wetzel, Second New York 
Regiment. 

Lieutenant John Furmann, First New York Regi- 
ment. 

Lieutenant Carl Fr. Weissenfels, Second New 
York Regiment. 

Captain-Lieutenant Peter Neslett, New York Ar- 
tillery. 

Captain-Lieutenant Peter Jaulmann, Sappers and 
Miners, died 1835. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



39 



This list is of the German members of the Society 
of the Cincinnati in New York alone, and no doubt 
on the rolls of the Society in other States there 
will be found many other Germans whose names 
belong to the roll of soldiers distinguished for their 
services in the war of the Revolution. 

In Seidensticker's admirable and exhaustive " His- 
tory of the German Society of Pennsylvania," there 
is a brief mention of the services of the Germans of 
Philadelphia in the patriot cause. In May, 1776, 
Congress organized a German regiment, of com- 
panies from Pennsylvania and Maryland, — the Penn- 
sylvania companies were five in number, and those 
from Maryland four. One of the Philadelphia com- 
panies was commanded by Colonel David Woelpper, 
an old soldier, for he had served in Germany under 
Frederick the Great, and in the old French war 
under Washington. The German regiment was first 
commanded by Hausegger, and it served with credit 
in Muhlenberg's brigade throughout the Revolution. 
Other German companies were raised at that time, 
and many Germans served in various arms of the 
service. The fines and penalties imposed on the 
German citizens of well-known rebel principles are 
all recited in Seidensticker's history, showing how 



40 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

strongly the German element in and about Phila- 
delphia adhered to the patriot cause even at the 
time the British held the city. In Mr. H. M. Jen- 
kins's " History of Gwynedd," there is a similar 
collection of evidence as to the stout adhesion of 
the Germans of Montgomery County to the rebel 
side. He tells the story of one of their number 
who was charged with the serious offence of giving 
information to the enemy, and escaped finally severe 
punishment on the merciful ground that he was a 
weak politician, — a plea that would cover many 
offences in our own day and generation. 

John Paul Schott, the commander of a battalion in 
Armand's legion, was born in Prussia in 1744, 
served as a cadet, became adjutant of Prince Fer- 
dinand of Brunswick, came to America in 1776, was 
authorized to raise an independent company of Ger- 
man dragoons, led the right wing of Hand's brigade 
in Sullivan's army, in 1779, in the attack on the Five 
Nations, and commanded the forts in Wyoming Val- 
ley to the close of the war. He filled a variety of 
civil offices afterwards, dying in Philadelphia in 
1829. 

Washington's mounted body-guard was led by 
Major Barth. van Heer, and consisted of fourteen 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 4I 

officers and fifty-three men, nearly all Germans. The 
First Continental Regiment of Pennsylvania was 
commanded by Colonel John Philipp de Haas, who 
was born in 1735, came to America in 1750, was en- 
sign in the French war, became a brigadier-general 
in 1777, took part in the expedition to Canada, and 
served with credit to the close of the war. 

Among the French allied army sent to the help 
of the struggling colonies were many Germans, and 
the investigation of H. A. Ratterman, editor of the 
Pionier, attests both their number and influence. It 
will be found in volume xiii. of that journal (1881), 
at pages 317, 360, and 420. Colonel Esebeck com- 
manded a regiment, " Zweibriicken" (the German 
equivalent for the French " Deux Ponts"). In Force's 
" Archives" many of the details of others are given. 
At the time it was a matter of arrangement be- 
tween neighboring and friendly princes, how many 
of the men of one country should enlist in the 
army of another. France had troops from the 
Rhine Provinces, Baden, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Ans- 
pach, and Switzerland in its service. With the 
Zweibriicken Regiment came the two princes of 
the name, Major Esebeck in command, and Captain 
Haake. A battalion from Trier served in Custine's 

4* 



42 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

regiment, one from Elssass, in the Bourbonnais, a 
large number were in Lauzun's cavalry regiment, and 
an Anhalt regiment assisted in the siege of Savannah. 
Among the German officers in the French service 
were Count Fersen, chief of staff of Rochambeau, 
besides his adjutant, Von Closen, and his chief of 
artillery, Gau. Count von Stedingk commanded the 
Anhalt regiment, and, like his friend Fersen, be- 
longed to the old Pomeranian nobility, although 
both afterwards died in the Swedish service. 

At Yorktown the Germans in the American army 
fought for a time against the Germans under the 
English flag, and the commands were given on both 
sides in German. A detachment of Germans placed 
the French flag on the walls of Yorktown after its 
capture. Among the prisoners were countrymen of 
the troops put over them as a guard, and many of 
them met as old friends and neighbors. When 
Tarleton tried to force his way out of the lines, it 
was with the German cavalry under Ewald, and 
they were met and repulsed by the Germans under 
Armand. Ratterman's estimate that eleven thou- 
sand German soldiers remained in this country after 
the war, may well be credited with recruits from 
both sides. With the Germans in the Pennsylvania 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 43 

brigade of Muhlenberg and the Maryland brigade 
of Gist, the soldiers of the German regiments in the 
English service soon made friends and found new 
homes. Indeed, the Anspach regiment, two days 
after the capitulation, offered their services as a body. 
Elking gives a list of twenty-eight officers of the 
Brunswick regiment who either remained or re- 
turned here after the war to settle. 

In the " History of the Early Settlement and In- 
dian Wars of Western Virginia," by Wills de Hass, 
(Wheeling and Philadelphia, 185 1), at page 344, is a 
brief biographical sketch of Lewis Wetzel, a typical 
borderer, a brave and successful Indian fighter, and 
the right arm of the settlers in their almost ceaseless 
war with the natives. His father was one of the 
first settlers on Wheeling Creek, and was killed in 
1787 by Indians, sacrificing his own life to save that 
of his comrades. From that time the son, then 
almost twenty-three years of age, and already well 
trained by his father, devoted himself to avenging 
his life. At twenty-five he enlisted under General 
Harmar, commanding at Marietta, and, while in the 
army, he shot an Indian, was arrested, escaped, and 
reached home, in spite of prison, guard, and fetters. 
An attempt to recapture him was given up out of 



44 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



fear of a counter-rebellion against the United States 
troops, and when he did get into their hands, General 
Harmar promptly released him. He went to New 
Orleans, was there arrested, was released a broken 
man, yet he was long active in leading new set- 
tlers and purchasers through the trackless forests of 
Western Virginia, until his death in 1808. The 
name is perpetuated in Wetzel County, West Vir- 
ginia, although the early German name seems to have 
passed through numerous variations, — Whetzell, 
Whitzell, Watzel, and Wetzel, — but of its German 
derivation there can, of course, be no doubt. The 
Poes, too, who figure in this border history, were 
sons of German settlers, from Frederick County, 
Maryland, and the elder Frederick Poe, who moved 
west in 1774, and died in 1840 at the age of ninety- 
three, was, like his younger brother, Andrew, a back- 
woodsman in every sense of the word. Shrewd, 
active, and courageous, they fixed their abode on 
the frontier of civilization, determined to contest 
inch by inch with the native Indians their right to 
the soil and their privilege to live. Their hairbreadth 
escapes and bold adventures remain even now among 
the legends of their early homes, and fortunately are 
preserved in the pages of the local historian. As 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. ** 

late as 1846 there was found at the mouth of the 
Kanawha one of the leaden plates suitably inscribed, 
bearing date 1749, and asserting the claim of France 
to the region watered by the Ohio River and its 
tributaries, and others were found at Venango and 
Marietta. Washington's expedition with the Vir- 
ginia troops in 1754 first made this region familiar 
to the colonists, and settlements soon began. From 
Pennsylvania came some of the German Dunkards, 
who hoped to practise the peaceful doctrines of their 
Ephrata brethren, but with them came others more 
willing to fight than to pray, preferring to take land 
by force rather than by purchase. Braddock's cam- 
paign, with its disaster, only served to make the 
region better known to the Provincial troops, and 
from them came the best settlers in the region thus 
opened. The fate of the Christian and Moravian 
Indians, settled at Gnadenhutten, Schonbrunn, Salem, 
and Lichtenau, massacred in cold blood, is a per- 
manent blot upon the leaders in that inexcusable 
raid, and it was terribly revenged in the utter failure 
of the next attack, in 1782. 

General George Weedon, really Gerhard von der 
Wieden, was born in Hanover, served in the war of 
the Austrian Succession, 1742-48, was distinguished 



46 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

for his performance at the battle of Dettingen, served 
with Colonel Henry Bouquet in Flanders, came with 
him as lieutenant in his Royal American Regiment, 
and served with it in the old French war, in the cap- 
ture of Fort du Quesne, and in the campaign against 
the Indians. The war over, he settled in Fredericks- 
burg, Virginia, then largely populated by Germans, 
and when the Revolution broke out became captain 
and later on lieutenant-colonel of the Third Virginia 
Militia, colonel of the First Virginia Continental, and 
finally, on February 24, 1777, brigadier-general, 
taking a leading part in the battles of Brandywine 
and Germantown; he left the service for a time, then 
in 1780 re-entered it under Muhlenberg, and com- 
manded the Virginia militia at the siege of York- 
town. 

Armand's legion was originally organized by 
Nicholas Dietrich Freiherr von OttendorfT, a Saxon 
nobleman, lieutenant under Frederick the Great, who 
came to this country with Kosciuszko, and became 
major, commanding an independent corps of light 
infantry. It was subsequently reorganized as cavalry 
under Armand, OttendorfT became lieutenant-colonel, 
and his adjutant, Howelman, a Hanoverian nobleman, 
together with the officers of the companies, were all 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



47 



advanced in grade, — the names are given in full in 
the eighth volume of the Pionier (1876-77), p. 436. 

Of the Pennsylvania Germans who were soldiers 
in the Revolution the Hiesters were prominent ex- 
amples. Four sons of one family were officers : 
Daniel, the eldest, colonel, John and Gabriel, ma- 
jors, and William, the youngest, captain ; a cousin, 
Joseph, was in the " Flying Camp," became colonel, 
later major-general of militia, a member of Congress, 
and a leader of his party in Berks County down to 
his death in 1832, in his eightieth year. John and 
Daniel, too, became major-generals of militia, and 
they, too, were also sent to Congress, one from 
Pennsylvania and the other from Maryland, where 
he made his home. 

The knowledge of the early Germans, and their 
share in our history, will- no longer be hidden in the 
records of scattered local periodicals. In the series 
of " Geschichtsblatter, Bilder u. Mittheilungen aus 
dem Leben der Deutschen in Amerika, herausgege- 
ben von Carl Schurz," published in New York by 
Steiger, we have the promise of a valuable contribu- 
tion to our slender stock of available information as 
to the Germans in the United States. The first vol- 
ume of this series is a reprint of Kapp's " Die Deut- 



48 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

schen im Staate New York wahrend des i8ten Jahr- 
hunderts," originally published in Leipsic and New 
York, in 1867. At page 126 there is a list of the 
officers of the four battalions organized in Schoharie 
Valley by Germans, in 1775, to take part in the war 
of independence. All four colonels were Germans, 
viz. : Nicholas Herchheimer, First Battalion, Canajo- 
harie; Jacob Kloch, Second Battalion, the Pfalz ; 
Friedrich Fischer, Third Battalion, Mohawk ; Hanjost 
Herchheimer, Fourth Battalion, German Flats. The 
Herchheimers were the sons of an early German set- 
tler in Western New York, who had won distinction 
by his gallant defence against Indian attacks in the 
old French war. General Nicholas Herchheimer, who 
fell in battle in 1777 in defence of the liberties of his 
country, was honored with the praise of Washington, 
and by a modest monument which perpetuates his 
services and sacrifice. One of his soldiers, born in 
Germany, J. A. Hartmann, survived until 1836, when 
he died at the age of ninety-two, after an old age of 
poverty, borne with fortitude, and his name is now 
best remembered in his old home, where he lived at 
the public expense, as an example of the tardy grati- 
tude of the republic he too had aided to establish. 
Herchheimer is the type of the well-to-do settlers 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 49 

of German descent, Hartmann of the poor emigrant, 
but both did their duty manfully in the struggle for 
independence, and thus set an example freely fol- 
lowed by others, Germans both by birth and descent, 
who fought for the Union. 

Among the leading German soldiers of the Revo- 
lutionary war from New York, was Hermann von 
Zedwitz, major of the First Regiment; his life is 
sketched by Alfred Schucking in volume iii:, p. 185, 
of the Pionier. The command of Montreal was given 
to Colonel Rudolph Witzema of the same regiment, 
an old officer in the Royal Colonial army, who left 
the Continental army under a cloud, returned to 
England, and died there in 1803. 

The share of the Germans as officers and soldiers 
on the patriot side in the war of the Revolution won 
them the confidence and gratitude of Washington. 
The Hessians under Riedesel, who surrendered with 
Burgoyne, were sent to Virginia, where they lived 
near Jefferson, who thus learned to know them, gave 
them the use of his library, and enjoyed their 
music. 

The second volume of Schurz's series, " Bilder aus 
der Deutsch Pennsylvanischen Geschichte," is from 
the pen of Professor Oswald Seidensticker, whose 

5 



5o 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



services in the cause of our local German history- 
have received general acknowledgment for their 
thoroughness and accuracy. He describes in detail 
the part taken by the Germans of Pennsylvania in 
both the Continental army under Washington and 
the Provincial or State militia, and gives the names 
of the officers of the German Battalion, and their 
share in the war of independence. In the Second, 
Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Pennsylvania Regi- 
ments were many Germans. The Second was com- 
manded by Colonel Philippe de Haas ; the lieutenant- 
colonel of the Third was Robert Bunner, who fell at 
Monmouth, in 1778; and Mentges of the Fifth and 
Becker of the Sixth were also Germans. Many of 
these were members of the German Society, and 
Colonel Farmer, first captain of a company of sharp- 
shooters, and later commissary-general, was four 
times president of the German Society after the 
war. 

Reading sent three Hiesters, and York many Ger- 
mans, in the regiments that served in the Revolution. 
Pennsylvania Germans were numerous in Armand's 
legion, in Schott's dragoons, and in Van Heer's 
cavalry brigade. Quakers, Mennonites, Dunkers, 
and Herrnhuters sacrificed their religious tenets 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



51 



and associations to serve their country, while the 
Lutherans and others who had no conscientious 
scruples against bearing arms, were well represented 
in the field. Foremost among these was General 
Muhlenberg, born in Montgomery County in 1746, 
the son of the oldest clergyman of the Lutheran 
Church in Pennsylvania, who destined all his three 
sons to follow him in the church, educated at Halle, 
settled in 1772 in Virginia, as pastor of a German 
Lutheran congregation in the Shenandoah Valley. 
He there became a friend of Patrick Henry and Wash- 
ington. Earnestly supporting the cause of Ameri- 
can independence, he became colonel of the Eighth 
Virginia, with Abraham Bowman and Peter Helfen- 
stein as his field-officers. In January, 1776, he 
preached his last sermon, urging on his hearers the 
duty of patriotic devotion to the cause of the 
country, and then, throwing aside the clerical gown, 
showed his military uniform, and instantly over three 
hundred of his listeners followed his example and 
joined his regiment. Congress soon made him a 
brigadier-general, and throughout the war his zeal, 
his courage, his energy, were appreciated by Wash- 
ington and Lafayette, and the other leaders of the 
Revolution. His part in the final surrender of Corn- 



52 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



wallis at Yorktown made him a major-general, and 
yet so modest was he that when peace returned his 
old parishioners would gladly have made him once 
more their pastor. Seven years of war had, how- 
ever, changed the current of his thoughts, and set- 
tling in Philadelphia, he became vice-president of the 
State, under Franklin, and, owing to Franklin's age 
and infirmities, was practically the head of the gov- 
ernment. In 1788 he and his brother worked ener- 
getically to secure the adoption of the Constitution 
of 1789, and under it he sat in the First Congress, 
as well as in the Second and the Sixth, always a stout 
advocate of the Democratic party; he was three 
times president of the German Society. His de- 
scendants, and those of his venerable father, have 
served the state and the church in many ways, and 
always with honor to their German blood. His 
statue stands in the Capitol at Washington, as the 
representative man chosen by Pennsylvania to take 
a place among the heroes gathered there from all 
parts of the country. His name and his fame are part 
of the inheritance which the German population of 
Pennsylvania transmits to future generations to show 
how thoroughly the German element has done its 
duty alike in war and in peace, and how well it 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 53 

deserves to have its record preserved and published 
for the information of their descendants and of the 
country. 

Many of the early settlers of Kentucky were Ger- 
mans from Virginia and North Carolina, and they 
held the frontier outposts against the incursions of 
hostile Indians. Many old Revolutionary soldiers 
there found homes, and their sons were active in the 
war of 18 1 2. Frankfort, the capital of the State, 
owes its name to its German founders, for the most 
part emigrants from Frankfort-on-the-Main, and its 
vicinity, who came hither in 1786-87. The first phy- 
sician was Dr. Louis Marschall, father of Humphrey 
Marshall, noted in both the civil and military his- 
tory of Kentucky. Thus many of the German names 
were anglicized, some — e.g., Jager translated into 
Hunter— completely disguised, yet the industry of 
local historians has shown that a very large part 
of the early settlement of Kentucky was made by 
Germans. 

Among the soldiers of German descent a marked 
and exceptional case is that of General John A. 
Quitman. He was the son of the pastor of the 
German Lutheran Church of Schoharie, who was 
himself born in Iserlohn, Germany, and came to this 

5* 



54 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



country in 1795. The father was a strong, deter- 
mined man, with a high notion of his own impor- 
tance, who showed a will of his own not unlike that 
of the son. The elder Quitman left Schoharie to 
become pastor of the church in Rheinbeck, where 
he died in 1832. His son was born there in 1798, 
and educated by his father's successor. As a young 
man he went South, became a distinguished lawyer 
and member of Congress from his new home in 
Natchez, Mississippi, took a leading place among 
the general officers of volunteers in the Mexican 
war, was prominent in urging on the people of 
the South the extreme doctrines of States' rights, 
rejoicing in the name of fire-eater, and was generally 
looked on as the intellectual leader of the agitation 
which finally ended in the Rebellion of 1861. His 
death, in 1858, saved him from sharing in the de- 
vastation his theories had brought over the section 
which accepted him as their representative. 

In the Revolution there were adherents of Whigs 
and Tories even in the same family, and this was 
as true of the Germans as of the other nationalities 
settled in the colonies ; but in the Rebellion the mi- 
nority in either of the two great sections into which 
the country was divided had little power or influence 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 55 

to stem the tide that finally led to the success of 
the Union. Still, the Germans were found on both 
sides, for the self-reliant, independent character of 
the German leads him to choose his own course, 
and to adhere to it in spite of popular opposition. 
In Arkansas, KlingelhofTer, son of the founder of a 
German colony at Little Rock, became an officer 
of the Confederate army. 

The registers and rolls of the regular army of the 
United States bear the names of many distinguished 
soldiers of German birth and descent, and not a few 
of them brought to the service of their new father- 
land the training and experience acquired in their 
native country. In the exhaustive dictionaries of 
the army by Gardiner and Henry and Hamersly, 
and in the invaluable pages of General George W. 
Cullum's " Record of the Graduates of West Point," 
are found many examples of the German soldier in 
the army of the United States. One example de- 
serves special mention. 

John Baptiste de Barth, Baron de Walbach, brig- 
adier-general and colonel commanding Fourth Ar- 
tillery, U.S.A., was the third son of Count Joseph 
de Barth and Marie Therese de Rohmer. He was 
born in Munster, Valley of St. Gregory, Upper 



56 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



Rhine, Germany, on the 3d day of October, 1766, 
and was educated at the military school at Stras- 
bourg. In December, 1792, he entered as a cadet 
the company commanded by Baron de Wald, Regi- 
ment of Royal Alsace, Prince Maximillian of Deux 
Ponts colonel and proprietor, in the service of the 
King of France. He was promoted and served in 
the same regiment as ensign until October, 1783, 
and then until November as gentleman volunteer in 
the hussars, General Baron de Kellerman command- 
ing. From January, 1783, until January 9, 1784, 
he served in the Regiment of Luzern Hussars, 
when he received the appointment of sub-lieutenant 
(cornet), and continued to serve in the successive 
grades, second lieutenant, first lieutenant, until May, 
1792, and captain. Declining the commission of 
captain, he left France to join the armies of the 
Prince, brother of King Louis XVI. He served 
in this army as gentleman volunteer, on horseback, 
at his own expense, under Colonel Count de Pes- 
talozzi, his former colonel of the Luzern Hussars. 
With this corps he made the campaign in Cham- 
pagne, in 1792, in the advance of the Prussian army, 
until it was disbanded at Maestrich. He then left 
Liege, passed through the French lines to Treves, 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. rj 

and brought back his sister, Mme. Blondeau, and 
placed her, with their three children, under the care 
of her husband, lieutenant-colonel, formerly major, 
of artillery, who had served in the army of Rocham- 
beau in America. He then went to Germany, took 
part in the attack on Frankfort, January 6, 1793, 
and later joined the Sixty-second Company, First 
Battalion of the Austrian Chasseurs of Conde, 
serving, during the campaign of 1793, in attacks 
on the French lines at Germersheim, Yorkheim, 
Langenkardet, and Weissembourg, where the Aus- 
trians captured one hundred and fifty-five pieces of 
cannon; the losses in both armies being estimated 
at twenty-two thousand men. He then accepted 
a captaincy from the Prince de Rohan, and covered 
the retreat of the unfortunate army of the Duke of 
York northward to Holland and Germany. Finally 
he embarked with his regiment, the Hussars of 
Rohan, for the British West Indies, on the promise 
of the British Government that they should always 
serve on horseback, and that at the end of four 
years they were to be returned to their homes. 
In 1798, being then the third officer of the regi- 
ment, which had been reduced by yellow fever 
from twelve hundred to one hundred and thirty, 



58 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



he obtained leave for six months to visit his father, 
who had come to America at the outbreak of the 
French Revolution. With twenty-four other noble- 
men he had agreed to buy forty thousand acres 
of land on the Scioto River, Ohio, paying half the 
purchase-money to Joel Barlow and William Play- 
fair, agents in Paris of Colonel William Duer, ac- 
credited by a letter from Thomas Jefferson. Count 
de Barth sailed with three hundred emigrants, landed 
in Alexandria, Virginia, in March, 1790, and then 
proceeded to Marietta, Ohio, where he found that 
Duer had become a bankrupt. He returned to Phil- 
adelphia, purchased a country-seat, — Springettsbury 
Manor, Bush Hill, a mansion with sixty acres, — but 
he died there September 24, 1793, and was buried 
in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Philadel- 
phia. Bush Hill was occupied as a hospital during 
the yellow fever, and as there was no one author- 
ized to make the last payment, it was sold by the 
sheriff and passed from the family. In 1798 Colonel, 
then Major, Walbach, on his arrival, retained Messrs. 
William Rawle, Jared Ingersoll, and James Heatly, 
but owing to the loss of documents could obtain no 
redress. Major Walbach then resigned his com- 
mission as major in the Hussars of Rohan and 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



59 



became an adopted citizen of the United States. 
In the autumn of 1798 he entered the army of the 
United States on the invitation of Washington, 
Hamilton, and McHenry, as second lieutenant of 
cavalry, and was appointed adjutant of a cavalry 
regiment, holding that post until the corps was 
disbanded in June, 1799. He then was employed 
in the office of the Adjutant-General of the United 
States, General William North, who had been aid 
to General Steuben. In December, 1799, he was 
employed to assist General Charles C. Pinckney in 
preparing regulations for the cavalry, and later to 
assist General Hamilton in preparing regulations 
for the artillery, and afterwards he was ordered to 
report to General Washington, to take charge of 
a detachment of dragoons. He was appointed, in 
1 80 1, first lieutenant in the First Regiment of Ar- 
tillery and Engineers, and in 1802 aid to General 
Wilkinson; in 1804, adjutant of artillery and mili- 
tary agent at Fort Constitution, New Hampshire; in 
1806, captain of artillery; in 1812, assistant deputy 
quartermaster; in 18 1 3, assistant adjutant-general 
with the rank of major, and assistant adjutant- 
general with the rank of colonel, and brevet major, 
for gallant conduct at the battle of Chrystler's Fields; 



6o THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

in 1 8 1 5 , major of artillery and brevet lieutenant- 
colonel; in 1830, brevet colonel for ten years' further 
service, and lieutenant-colonel in the First Regiment 
of Artillery; in 1842, colonel of the Fourth Regi- 
ment of Artillery, and made commander at Fortress 
Monroe and brevet brigadier-general; and in 185 1 
he was assigned to the command of the Depart- 
ment of the East. He died in Baltimore, Maryland, 
on the 10th of June, 1857, of disease contracted in 
the war of 1812. A highly commendatory order was 
issued by General Scott, lieutenant-general com- 
manding at the time of his death, reciting his long 
military career, his distinguished services, and his 
unwavering integrity, truth, and honor, strict atten- 
tion to duty, and zeal for the service, tempering 
the administration of an exact discipline by the 
most elevated courtesies. General George W. Cul- 
lum, in his " Campaigns and Engineers of the War 
of 1 812-15," at page 168, credits him with saving the 
artillery at Chrystler's Fields in 18 13. His grand- 
son, John de Barth Walbach Gardiner, is an assist- 
ant surgeon in the United States army. His son, 
L. de B. Walbach, who died in 1853, was a graduate 
of West Point and a captain of ordnance. Another 
son died an officer of the United States navy. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 6j 

General Walbach is well remembered by old offi- 
cers of the regular army as a fine soldierly charac- 
ter, full of zeal and pride in his profession, and a 
man of many manly virtues and attractive qualities. 
His brother was a Roman Catholic priest in Balti- 
more, and in their old age these two men, living 
together, were typical examples of the professions 
of war and peace.* 

Among the early graduates of West Point, a not- 
able example of the way in which Germany has sup- 
plied our army with officers is the case of Julius F. 
Heileman, son of the surgeon of Riedesel's German 
Brigade in Burgoyne's army ; he was appointed a 
cadet in 1803, and rose to be major of the Second 
Artillery, when he fell in Florida, in 1836. 

George Nauman was a graduate of West Point in 
1823, who rose by slow but good service, and died as 
lieutenant-colonel of the First Artillery in Philadel- 
phia in 1863. He was born in Pennsylvania sixty 
years before. 

* The battle of Leipsic, the turning-point of the uprising of Ger- 
many against Napoleon, was celebrated in Philadelphia by German 
citizens, with toasts in honor of the Emperor of Russia, the burning 
of Moscow, Blucher, the German Princes, and the Patriots of South' 
America. 

6 



62 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

General Ammen, who was distinguished during the 
Rebellion, was a native of Virginia, a graduate of 
West Point in 1831, had resigned to engage in teach- 
ing and engineering, and, when the war broke out, 
re-entered the service as colonel of the Twenty- 
fourth Ohio ; as a brigadier-general, he served with 
great bravery in the West. 

Edmund Schriver and Alexander Shiras were grad- 
uates of 1833, and both were born in Pennsylvania. 
Their services in the Rebellion were highly appre- 
ciated. 

Herman Haupt, a graduate of 1835, was born in 
Philadelphia, and, besides his services in the field, has 
been a pioneer in the great business of railroad build- 
ing across the continent. His son graduated in 1867. 

Luther and Roland and Hagner, all of the class of 
1836, bore good Pennsylvania German names. 

The Muhlenbergs have had a representative, and 
often more than one, in the regular army since the 
time of the early Pennsylvania soldier down to our 
own day, and all have done honor to a name that is 
looked on as one fittingly chosen as the type of the 
Pennsylvania soldier and statesman. The Muhlen- 
bergs, six at least, fill an honored place on the regis- 
ters of the regular army, in which they have a right 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 63 

by descent from patriot ancestors of the Revolu- 
tion. 

General S. P. Heintzelman, a veteran of the regular 
army, was born in Lancaster County in 1805. His 
grandfather, a native of Augsburg, was the first white 
settler in Manheim, where his grandson was educated 
until he went to West Point in 1826. He was pro- 
moted and brevetted for his gallantry in the Mexican 
war, and at the outbreak of the Rebellion became 
colonel of the Seventeenth United States Infantry. 
At Bull Run he was wounded ; on the Peninsula he 
commanded a corps, and throughout the war he was 
always on duty. 

Francis Lieber was born in Berlin in 1800; he 
grew up in the midst of the earnest aspirations of 
Germany for freedom from the French yoke, and at 
the age of fifteen, following the example of his elder 
brothers, and with the approval of his parents, en- 
listed in the Colberg Regiment under Blucher. He 
began his short experience of war at Ligny, was 
wounded, and returned after the campaign of Water- 
loo to resume his work as a school-boy. With the 
other young Turners, he followed Jahn in his plan for 
political as well as physical regeneration, and with 
his leader he was imprisoned for excess of patriotism. 



6 4 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



His four months' confinement was not in itself a 
great hardship, but it carried with it a prohibition to 
study in any Prussian university, and this implied his 
exclusion from public employment. He studied at 
Jena, Halle, and Dresden, and then at twenty-one 
took part in the Greek struggle, with very unsatis- 
factory results. 

Then, encouraged by Niebuhr, in whose family he 
had been employed in Rome, he returned to Berlin, 
only to be again imprisoned, an enforced idleness 
which he used in the composition of a volume of 
poems of the merriest kind ; after trying in vain to 
secure a stable position, he freed himself from the un- 
comfortable results of his early patriotism by coming 
to America, where he arrived in 1827. He estab- 
lished a swimming-school in Boston after the model 
of those of Germany, but soon undertook a very 
great work, — the preparation of the "Encyclopaedia 
Americana," based on Brockhaus's " Conversations 
Lexicon," published in Philadelphia, which then be- 
came the scene of his active literary labors. He pre- 
pared an elaborate scheme for the management of 
Girard College, and began his independent author- 
ship. He went to the University of South Carolina, 
in 1835, as Professor of History and Political Econ- 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 65 

omy. There he wrote and taught until 1857, when 
he gladly left the South. 

When the Rebellion broke out he was quietly 
settled at Columbia College in New York, but one 
of his sons went into the Confederate service, another 
with the Illinois troops into the Union army, and a 
third got a commission in the regular army, and he 
himself began his work as legal adviser to the govern- 
ment on questions of military and international law 
by preparing a code of instructions for the govern- 
ment of armies of the United States in the field, and 
from that time on he was in constant employment in 
that direction, putting his vast store of learning at 
the disposition of the authorities on every fitting 
occasion. He maintained a close correspondence 
with the leading German professors Bluntschli, Mohl, 
HoltzendorfT, and did much to secure in Germany a 
proper appreciation of the great work done for the 
world by securing the perpetuation of the American 
Union, and later on to make America alive to the 
merits of the great struggle with France which se- 
cured German unity. His busy life ended in 1872, 
and his best epitaph was his own favorite motto, 
" Patria Cara, Carior Libertas, Veritas Carissima," for 
Country, Liberty, and Truth, were the great aims 

6* 



66 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

in all he wrote and spoke and thought. His ser- 
vices were of a kind not often within the reach and 
range of a single life, and his memory deserves to 
be honored and kept green in both his native and 
his adopted country. He was well represented in 
the Union cause by his two sons, Hamilton, who 
served in the Ninety-second Illinois, and died in 
1876, an officer of the regular army, and Guido, 
still in the regular service, through whom his name 
is perpetuated in the army register, while the death 
of another son on the Confederate side was another 
sacrifice to the cause of the Union. 

His " Instructions for Armies in the Field," Gen- 
eral Order No. 100, published by the Government of 
the United States, April 24, 1863, were the first codi- 
fication of international articles of war, and marked 
an epoch in the history of international law and of 
civilization. His other contributions to military and 
to international law, published at various times during 
the civil war, together with his other miscellaneous 
writings on political science, have been reprinted in 
the two volumes of his works issued by J. B. Lippin- 
cott & Co., in 1 88 1, and these, with his memoirs and 
the tributes paid him by President Gilman and Judge 
Thayer, are his best monument. A memoir by T. S. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. §j 

Perry well deserves attention, and the German trans- 
lation, edited by Holtzendorff, shows Lieber's popu- 
larity in Germany. 

General August V. Kautz was born in Baden in 
1828, and came as a lad to this country, where his 
family settled in Ohio. At the outbreak of the 
Mexican war he enlisted in the First Ohio Regi- 
ment, and was rewarded for his services by being 
appointed a lieutenant in the regular army. He was 
captain of cavalry at the outbreak of the Rebellion, 
commanded his regiment, the Sixth Cavalry, under 
McClellan, in the operations before Richmond, was 
appointed colonel of the Second Ohio Cavalry and 
chief of cavalry of the Twenty-third Corps, and 
brevetted major-general in both the volunteer and 
regular service. He became lieutenant-colonel of 
the Fifteenth Infantry after the war, is now colonel 
of the Eighth Infantry, and is the author of some 
excellent works on various subjects of military 
science. 

Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Mordecai, of the 
Ordnance Department of the United States army, is a 
graduate of West Point, of the class of June, 1861, 
and is now major of his corps. His scientific ser- 
vices have been recognized both in and out of the 



68 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

army. He is the son of a distinguished officer of the 
regular army, Major A. Mordecai, of the class of 
1823, whose military record was a very brilliant one; 
his name is familiar as the author, with General 
McClellan and General Delafield, of an admirable 
report of their visit to Europe and to the Crimea 
during the Russian war of 1854. His grandfather 
was a German. Father and son have both con- 
tributed to the science of their branch of the mili- 
tary profession, ordnance; and the elder, Major 
Mordecai, gave the first impulse to Professor 
Henry's application of electricity to ballistics, — 
the art of measuring the velocity of projectiles, 
now become a matter of every-day use in all arse- 
nals throughout the world. 

General George A. Custer, one of the most pictu- 
resque characters of the war and an exceptional 
soldier in his Indian campaigns, was the great- 
grandson of an officer of the Hessian soldiers sent 
here to serve in the British army during the Revo- 
lution. His ancestor, paroled in 1778, after Bur- 
goyne's surrender, settled in Pennsylvania, married 
there, changed his German name, " Kuster," to one 
easier to pronounce in English, and moved to Mary- 
land, where the father of General Custer was born 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 69 

in 1806. His famous son was born in Ohio, in 
1839, as a boy taught school in his native village, 
Hopedale, until 1857, when he was appointed a cadet 
at West Point. Graduating there in June, 186 1, 
he was assigned to the Second Cavalry, served with 
distinction, was made a captain on the staff of Gen- 
eral McClellan, served with General Kearney and 
General Pleasonton, was appointed a brigadier-gen- 
eral for his gallantry at the battle of Aldie, and 
commanded, successively, a brigade and a division 
of cavalry, which he led with distinguished bravery. 
He was promoted to be a major-general of volun- 
teers, a brevet major-general of the United States 
army, and lieutenant-colonel of the Seventh Cav- 
alry, served under General Hancock in a series of 
campaigns against the Indians, and finally fell in 
battle with the Sioux. He was the author of many 
capital contributions to the periodical literature after 
the civil war, and his memory is preserved in his 
wife's charming little book, " Military Life on the 
Frontiers," and in the " Life of General Custer," by 
F. Whittaker, published shortly after his heroic death 
in June, 1876. 

Lieutenant John T. Greble, of the Second Ar- 
tillery, a graduate of West Point, of the class of 



7o 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



1854, is well remembered as the first officer of the 
regular army to fall in the war of the Rebellion. 
Born in Philadelphia in 1834, he was killed in ac- 
tion, at Big Bethel, Virginia, on the 10th of June, 
1 86 1. He was one of the most popular officers in 
the service, distinguished alike for gallantry and 
attainments. He, too, was of German descent, and 
the traditions of the family were all patriotic. His 
great-grandfather, Andrew Greble, a native of Saxe- 
Gotha, came to this country in 1742, settled per- 
manently in Philadelphia, and enlisted warmly in 
the cause of the war of Independence. He and his 
four sons joined the American army, and fought at 
the battles of Princeton and Monmouth. Two of 
his ancestors on his mother's side, good Welsh 
Quakers, were in the Continental army. A gradu- 
ate of the Philadelphia High School, he showed at 
West Point and in the army a love of study, which, 
with his amiable manners and soldierly conduct, 
secured him the friendship of all with whom he 
was brought in contact. After serving in Florida, 
he was appointed to the corps of instructors at West 
Point, and was on duty at Fortress Monroe when 
the civil war broke out. His untimely death was 
due to his deliberate purpose to sacrifice his life to 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. yi 

save the lives of the large body of soldiers imper- 
illed by an overwhelming force. His heroism had 
its reward in the gratitude with which his memory 
is cherished both in the army and by the people. 
His son, Lieutenant Edwin St. John Greble, a grad- 
uate of the class of 1881, is now serving with the 
Second United States Artillery. 

William Heine was born in 1827, died in Dres- 
den, his native city, in October, 1885. He learned 
landscape and architectural painting in Paris, and 
was employed as a painter at the Dresden Court 
Theatre, but, after the revolution of 1848 in Sax- 
ony, came to the United States in 1851; he trav- 
elled in Central America, which he described in 
" Wanderbilder aus Centralamerika," Leipzig, 1853. 
He subsequently joined Perry's expedition to Japan, 
and, in i860, the Prussian expedition to the same 
country, describing it in his " Japan, Beitrage zur 
Kentniss des Landes u.s. Bewohner," Dresden, 1870. 
After the outbreak of the American civil war, he 
entered the Union army as captain of engineers ; 
advanced to the rank of brigadier, March, 1865 ; 
was afterwards employed in the United States con- 
sular service, and returned to his native land in 

1871. 



72 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



The Germans served in large numbers in cavalry 
and artillery companies of volunteers in the Mexican 
war, notably from Texas and Missouri, and many of 
them gained distinction in this service. Kentucky 
had its infantry regiment and its cavalry company of 
Germans in the Mexican war, and many Germans in 
its loyal regiments during the Rebellion, notably 
Companies E and G of the Fourth Cavalry, and 
Barth's company of the Twenty-eighth Kentucky 
Volunteers. Among the Germans whose services in 
Texas ought not to be forgotten is the once familiar 
name of William Langenheim ; and of his associates, 
Gustavus Schleicher in Texas and J. A. Wagener 
in South Carolina served in the Confederate army. 
New Orleans and Louisiana had among their leading 
Union men two representative Germans, — Christian 
Roselius and Michael Hahn. 

General Godfrey Weitzel was born in Germany in 
1835, and came with his parents to this country as a 
child, was appointed a cadet at West Point in his 
seventeenth year, and in 1855 graduated as a lieu- 
tenant of engineers. He served with Butler and 
Banks in the South, and led a division under Grant 
in the final conquest of Richmond. After the 
war he was constantly employed in his profession, 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 73 

until his untimely death in Philadelphia, March 19, 
1884. 

Colonel Alexander von Schrader, born in Ger- 
many, a soldier by training, was lieutenant-colonel 
of the Seventy-fourth Ohio, and became a major in 
the Thirty-ninth Infantry of the regular army, dying 
in service August 6, 1867. He had been reduced 
to the direst poverty before the war, but when the 
occasion came his distinguished gallantry and effi- 
cient military training stood him in good stead. 

Henry A. Hambright, retired as major Nine- 
teenth United States Infantry, brevet colonel United 
States army, brevet brigadier-general United States 
volunteers, was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 
March 24, 18 19. His father, Frederick, a major- 
general of militia, and his uncle, George, a colonel, 
both served in the war of 18 12. Colonel Ham- 
bright served in the Mexican war, in the war of the 
Rebellion as an officer of the Second Pennsylvania 
Volunteers, in the First Pennsylvania (three months) 
Volunteers, and as colonel of the Seventy-ninth 
Pennsylvania ; while still in the three months' service 
he was commissioned captain of the Eleventh United 
States Infantry, and served with distinguished gal- 
lantry through the war, and with great fidelity until 

7 



74 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

he was retired for disability incurred in the line of 
duty. 

A study of the register of officers of the regular 
army from 1779 shows a large proportion of Ger- 
mans, — beginning with Kalb and Steuben, in the 
German Battalion of Pennsylvania and Maryland, 
the artillery and engineer and other staff corps en- 
gaged in the wars of 1 812 and 1846. During the 
Rebellion many old soldiers of German birth were re- 
warded by commissions, and not a few distinguished 
German volunteers were also appointed in the reg- 
ular army, — among them Bliicher, Von Hermann, 
Luettwitz, Michalowski, Von Schirach. 

There were two million six hundred and ninety 
thousand men engaged in the army and navy during 
the Rebellion, beside seventy-two thousand emer- 
gency men called out for short periods of service. 
The Count of Paris, in his exhaustive history of the 
war, says that of the volunteers who enlisted during 
the first year only one-tenth were foreigners ; of the 
remainder, two-thirds were born on American soil 
and less than one-fourth were naturalized Europeans. 
In 1864, when conscription was partially resorted to, 
eighty per cent, were natives. This army, more than 
two-thirds natives and less than one-third foreigners, 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 75 

was raised out of a population of nineteen millions. 
Far more than one-third of the effective male popu- 
lation were of European birth, yet in the army there 
was less than that proportion in the ranks. 

The Confederacy at the time of the battle of Bull 
Run had about two hundred thousand men under 
arms. When the North called for five hundred 
thousand men, the South called for four hundred 
thousand. In 1862 the South had about one hun- 
dred and eighty thousand men in the field ; in April 
of that year the Confederate Congress ordered, not 
a draft as in the past, but a levy en masse of all 
white males between eighteen and thirty-five, resid- 
ing within the Confederacy, for three years or the 
war, divided into sixteen classes. Based on a popu- 
lation of five million whites, this should have pro- 
duced eight hundred thousand men, — it did give 
between four and five hundred thousand effective 
men. In September, 1862, the limit of age was ex- 
tended to forty-five, and the other limit was made 
to include all who had completed their seventeenth 
year since April. 

In the Confederate army there were many Ger- 
mans, and much of the literature of the war on the 
part of the South is made up of the records of those 



^6 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

who served on that side, — notable among them Heros 
von Borcke, and he speaks in his Munchausen-like 
book of finding among the riflemen an old Prus- 
sian soldier from Texas, — of meeting at Lee's head- 
quarters Captain Scheibert, of the Prussian engineers, 
detailed as an observer, but taking an active part as 
a combatant, — and the author of a book, " Sieben 
Monate in den Rebellen Staaten," published in Stet- 
tin in 1868, characterized by its strong Southern 
tone.* Then there is the book of another German 

*In McClellan's admirable life of General J. E. B. Stuart, there is 
a paper signed by that distinguished officer under date of June 17, 
1862, in which he says, — 

" M. Heros von Borcke, a Prussian cavalry officer, has shown him- 
self a thorough soldier and a splendid officer. I hope the [War] 
Department will confer as high a commission as possible on this 
deserving man, who has cast in his lot with us in this trying hour." 
(p. 69.) 

At page 307, we find that on the 19th of August, 1863, Major 
Heros von Borcke, an officer of the Prussian army, who was serving 
on General Stuart's staff, received a severe wound, which disabled 
him from further service, (p. 307.) 

In the Southern Bivouac Magazine, for February, 1886, published 
at Louisville, Kentucky, it is mentioned at page 515 that the distin- 
guished Colonel Von Borcke, Stuart's chief-of-staff, lately revisited 
Fauquier County, Virginia, staying near Upperville, on the northern 
border; his once robust constitution much affected by the ball he 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



77 



soldier of fortune, B. Estvan, whose " Kriegsbilder 
aus Amerika" appeared in Leipsic in 1864, as it 
had already been published in England and in New 
York in English in 1863. Fritz Annecke, a soldier 
in the West, published a work on " Der zweite 
Freiheitskrieg," in Frankfort in 186 1, — H. Blanken- 
burg another coming down to the Presidential elec- 
tion in 1868 (Leipsic, 1869); August Conrad " Schat- 

still carries in his right lung, received when he was wounded in 1863 ; 
but his jovial, impulsive, warm-hearted nature has not forsaken him. 
Colonel von Borcke served on the staff of Prince Frederic Charles, 
in the war of 1866, but his old wounds forced him to retire. 

Captain Scheibert's interest in the Southern cause did not end with 
the war; on returning to Germany, where he became major in the 
Prussian Engineers, he corresponded with the editor of the Southern 
Historical Society's Papers. In vol. v., p. 90, his letter on Gettys- 
burg, dated Stuttgart, November 21, 1879, * s printed, and in vol. iv., 
p. 2>2> y there is a notice by Colonel Venables, C.S.A., of a transla- 
tion of Scheibert's book into French, by Captain Bonnecque, of 
the French Engineers. In 1883, Major Scheibert published a Ger- 
man translation of Allan's " History of the Valley Campaign ;" and in 
a letter of October 13, 1881, dated at Hirshberg, Silesia, Prussia, he 
says he has translated and printed in German, Early's " Gettysburg," 
Stuart's and Lee's "Reports," Hubbard's " Chancellorsville," Patton's 
"Jackson," McClellan's "Jeb Stuart," Stuart's "Gettysburg," and 
biographies of Lee, Jackson, Stuart, and Mosby. His " Burgerkrieg 
in den Vereinigten Staaten" has been translated into French and 
Spanish. 

7* 



7% 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



ten und Lichtbilder aus dem amerikanischen Leben 
wahrend des Secessionskrieges" (Hannover, 1879); 
Riistow, a recognized authority on war, a history 
of the war, from a purely military point of view. 
Mangold wrote " Der Feldzug in Neu Virginien in 
August, 1862" (Hannover, 1881), which has received 
high praise, — Constantin Sander, a history of the 
war, first down to 1862, and then a later and more 
complete volume, the former published in Frankfort in 
1863, the second in 1865. "Von Achten der Letzte" 
is a German novel on the Southern side published 
in Wiesbaden in 1871. Much that is of interest 
on the subject is to be found in the volume, " In 
der neuen Heimath, Geschichtliche Mittheilungen 
iiber die Deutschen Einwanderer in alien Theilen 
der Union, herausgegeben von Anton Eickhoff." 
2te Ausgabe, N. Y., Steiger, 1885, Svo, pp. 398. 

Of translations and newspaper magazine articles 
in German, the number is almost endless. Many 
Southern citizens living abroad tried to reach the 
German public by arguments and appeals, but the 
fact remains that the great mass of the German 
people were from first to last unshaken in their 
faith in the success of the Union, and they profited 
largely by the faith which led them to make in- 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



79 



vestments in American bonds and securities at a 
time of general doubt. 

In North Carolina there was a goodly number of 
Germans and of the descendants of the early Ger- 
man settlers in the Confederate service. In Wil- 
mington, North Carolina, at the commencement of 
the war, a company was raised under the name of 
the German Volunteers, afterwards Company A, 
Eighteenth Regiment North Carolina troops. The 
officers were, C. Cornehlsen, Captain ; H. Vollers, 
First Lieutenant; G. H. W. Runge, Second Lieu- 
tenant; E. Schulken, Third Lieutenant. There were 
seventy-five men rank and file, all Germans, in this 
organization, while in other branches of the service, 
artillery and cavalry, as well as in the Confederate 
States navy, there were Germans, — so that North 
Carolina had a fair share of them in its volunteers. 

South Carolina was not without its German sol- 
diers. Indeed, as early as 1670, the first German 
that set foot in Carolina, John Lederer, made a tour 
of exploration under the direction of Governor Wil- 
liam Berkeley, of Virginia ; he was a man of learn- 
ing; his journal was written in Latin, and the trans- 
lator, Sir William Talbot, Governor of Maryland, 
speaks highly of his literary attainments. The ac- 



3q THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

count of this journey was published and circulated, 
and doubtless had its effect in the settling of Caro- 
lina, for it is certain that in 1680 German immigration 
had fairly set in. In 1764 six hundred Palatines 
arrived in South Carolina. In 1766 the German 
Friendly Society was founded in Charleston, and as 
early as 1686 the German Lutherans were included 
among the leading elements of the population. Be- 
tween 1730 and 1750 a great addition was made 
from Switzerland and Germany, and the dreadful 
war that scourged the peaceful inhabitants for so 
many years drove thousands to America, and of 
these many came to Carolina. Of course in the 
Confederacy, and especially in its army from South 
Carolina and in the defence of Charleston, there were 
many Germans ; thus in the force that took posses- 
sion of Fort Moultrie in April, 1861, there was the 
German Artillery, Captain C. Nohrden ; and among 
the troops furnished by the city of Charleston to the 
Southern army, in the roster printed in Courtenay's 
History of Charleston, are the following German or- 
ganizations, viz. : 

Fourth Brigade South Carolina Militia : Ger- 
man Riflemen, Captain J. Small; Palmetto Rifle- 
men, Captain A. Melchers. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. Si 

Seventeenth Infantry, German Fusileers, Captain 
S. Lord, Jr. 

First Regiment of Artillery, Major John A. Wag- 
ener (a veteran of the war with Mexico, a member of 
Company F, the Charleston company of the South 
Carolina Regiment). 

German Artillery, Company A, Captain C. Nohr- 
den; German Artillery, Company B, Captain H. 
Harms. 

Cavalry, German Hussars, Captain Theodore 
Cordes. 

Marion Rifles, a volunteer corps of the fire depart- 
ment, Captain C. B. Sigwald. 

At the commencement of the war of the Rebel- 
lion, the Germans of Charleston, South Carolina, 
took an active share in the war, for they considered 
that their homes were assailed by the North, and they 
volunteered freely for the war, furnishing about four 
hundred men. The German Artillery, Companies 
A and B, were militia organizations, under command 
of Major John A. Wagener. These two companies 
served from the outset until the war ended. The 
two companies were under the respective command 
of Captains A. Nohrden and H. Harms. After 
the battle of Hilton Head, November 7, 1861, Major 



3 2 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

Wagener took command of the Home Guards in 
Charleston, and the commander of Company A was 
Captain D. Werner ; of Company B, Captain Franz 
Melchers, who served during the rest of the war. 
The command was reorganized after the war as one 
company, under Captain F. W. Wagener, who had 
served during the war after Captain Werner's resig- 
nation. The German Hussars, also a militia com- 
pany, volunteered for the war under Captain Theo- 
dore Cordes ; on his death, Captain Fremder took 
command, and after his death, Captain Hanke Wohl- 
ken served during the war. The German Volunteers 
were a company of young men under Captain W. K. 
Bachman ; they volunteered for and served through- 
out the war. All of them declared their allegiance to 
the home they had chosen voluntarily and shared the 
fate of the people who had received them kindly, 
while they hardly bothered their heads about the 
cause of the war. They were merchants, clerks, 
artisans, etc., and many of them have passed away 
during or since the war. Captain F. Melchers still 
survives, — for forty years a resident of Charleston, 
and for thirty-three years publisher of the Deutsche 
Zeitung, except during the four years of the war, 
when he served as lieutenant and as captain, and as 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 83 

lieutenant-colonel on the staff of General Wade 
Hampton. Captain F. W. Wagener and Captain 
Hanke Wohlken are merchants, Captain W. R. 
Bachman a lawyer, and Professor C. H. Bergmann, 
of the German School, was a volunteer and orderly 
sergeant in Bachman's company during the war. 
The survivors are about to erect a monument to 
their fallen comrades, and the Germans of Charleston 
have contributed a handsome sum for the purpose. 

The Charleston companies in the armies of the 
Confederate States for the war (1861-65) included 
in Courtenay's roster : 

Three companies of German artillery. 

Light Battery B,* Hampton Legion, Captain W. 
K. Bachman. 

Light Battery A, Captain F. W. Wagener. 

Light Battery B, Captain F. Melchers. 

Marion Rifles, Company A, Twenty-fourth Regi- 
ment South Carolina Volunteers, Captain C. B. 
Sigwald. 



* This company, called the German Volunteers, was raised by 
the German citizens of Charleston, mustered into service for the 
war as an infantry company, and subsequently transferred to the 
light artillery. 



8 4 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



German Hussars, Troop G, Third Regiment 
South Carolina Cavalry, Captain Theodore Cordes. 

In Texas many Germans served in the Confed- 
erate army. In Walker's Texas Division, the Third 
Texas Volunteer Infantry Regiment had Company 
B, Captain Biesenbuch, Lieutenants Koening and 
Uhl ; Company F, Captain Rosenheimer, Lieuten- 
ants Ztuni and Hafner; Company G, Captain Sher- 
hagen ; Company K, Captain Bosi, Lieutenants Sara- 
sin and Schleuning. In the Sixteenth Texas, Colonel 
Flournoy, Company E, Captain G. T. Marold, Lieu- 
tenants Klaedon, Hanke, and Grofif; Company H, 
of the Seventeenth, Captain Sabath, Lieutenant Koll- 
mauer, were all Germans. 

In the First Virginia Infantry, Company K had 
Lieutenants C. Bauman, B. Bergmeier, and A. Bitzel 
(see its history by Charles Loehr). 

The Louisiana militia organizations at the outset 
of the Rebellion included the New Orleans Jagers, 
Captain Peters, Lieutenants Fassbinder and Huth; 
the Sharpshooters, Captain Christern ; the Fusileers, 
Captain Sievers, Lieutenants Gerdes and Walbrack ; 
the La Fayette Guards, Captain Koenig, Lieutenants 
Hollenback and Fridebach ; the Jefferson Guards, 
Captain Wollrath, Lieutenant Lehman ; Reichard's 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



85 



Battalion ; Turner Guards, Captain Bahncke, Lieu- 
tenants Von Armlinsen, Eicholz, Schneider; Steuben 
Guards, Captain Burger, Lieutenants Kehrwald, 
Rosenbaum, Hausner ; Reichard Rifles, Captain 
Reitmeyer, Lieutenants Weise, De Petz, Muller; 
Louisiana Volunteers, Captain Ruhl, Lieutenants 
Von Zincken, Darrel ; Black Jagers, Captain Roben- 
horst ; Florence Guards, Captain Brummenstadt, 
Lieutenants Lachenmeyer, Wassernagel, Warburg. 
Bachman's was one of the batteries of the Wash- 
ington Artillery of New Orleans, and the Tenth 
Louisiana was commanded by Colonel Waggaman. 

In Georgia, among the troops engaged in defence 
of Fort Pulaski were the German Volunteers, Cap- 
tain John H. Stegin, one of the companies of the 
First Volunteer Regiment of Georgia. 

The register of the Confederate States army contains 
the following German names : Colonels J. T. Holtz- 
claw, Eighteenth Alabama, Brigadier-General ; A. H. 
Helvenstein, Sixteenth Alabama ; E. Waggaman, 
Tenth Louisiana ; L. C. Gause, Thirty-second Ar- 
kansas; Major W. O. Yager, Third Texas Cavalry; 
Captain R. M. Gans, Fourth Texas Cavalry ; Colonel 
J. N. Adenbousch, Second Virginia Infantry ; Colonel 

J. N. Waul, Tenth Texas, Brigadier-General; Captain 

8 



36 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

F. C. Schulz, Chestnut Artillery, South Carolina; 
Captain C. R. Hanleiter, Jr., Thompson's Artillery, 
Georgia; J. A. Englehard, Major and Assistant Ad- 
jutant-General, Pender's Light Division, Third Corps; 
R. W. Memminger, Assistant Adjutant-General and 
Chief of Staff, Department of Mississippi and East 
Louisiana. 

Gustav Schleicher was the first German in Con- 
gress, who there won reputation as a representative 
of the Germans of the United States. Born in 
Darmstadt in 1823, he studied at Giessen, became 
a successful civil engineer, emigrated to Texas in 
1847, established himself finally in San Antonio, 
served, successively, in both branches of the Texas 
Legislature, was lieutenant-colonel and colonel of 
the Texas Rangers in the Confederate army, and 
was elected to the United States Congress in 1874 
as a German Democrat. He showed marked ability, 
thorough training, and conscientious study. Re- 
elected twice to Congress, his premature death in 
1879 cut short a career which gave promise of honor 
to himself and usefulness to his adopted country. 

The statistics of nativity of the population of the 
States at the time of the Rebellion are not to be 
absolutely ascertained. I find in " Freiheit u. Skla- 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



87 



verei unter dem Sternenbanner, oder Land u. Leute 
in Amerika," by Theodore Griesinger, Stuttgart, 
1862, the statement that in Pennsylvania there were 
then over a million of German birth and descent ; 
in New York, 800,000; in Ohio, 600,000; in New 
Jersey, 125,000; in New England, 30,000; while 
there were in the Southern States, in Virginia, 
250,000; in Maryland, 125,000; in Missouri, over 
100,000; in Louisiana, 50,000; in Texas, 30,000; in 
Tennessee, 50,000 ; in North Carolina and Kentucky, 
70,000; in Delaware, 25,000; in South Carolina, 
20,000; in the cotton States, — Georgia, Alabama, 
Mississippi, and Arkansas, 10,000; in Florida, 5000. 
There is no estimate of the number in the North- 
west, that vast region from which came the volun- 
teers of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and 
Iowa. Of course the Germans of Missouri sup- 
plied large numbers of soldiers, some of them of 
great distinction, and many Germans from other 
States went to Missouri, as that was almost the 
first seat of active operations, and Fremont and 
Sigel and Asboth attracted Germans from all quar- 
ters, just as in the East, German regiments were 
asking to join Blenker's brigade until it became 
a division, and others were ready to swell the di- 



38 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

vision to a corps. Indeed, it was from Blenker's 
demand to lead it that McClellan was obliged to 
administer a reproof which led finally to his resig- 
nation from active service. 

The only attempt at an official analysis of the 
nativity of the soldiers of the Union army is that 
found in a volume of medical statistics published 
in a final report of the Provost-Marshal General, 
General James B. Fry, U.S.A., in which it is stated 
that out of 343,764 drafted men there were from 
Wurtemberg, 1; Austria, 67; Prussia, 754; Bavaria, 
35; Saxony, 15; Germany, 35,935; Switzerland, 
1 158; total, 37,965; but in another place it is said 
that there were of German birth 54,944 soldiers 
drafted in the service. In the same report it is said 
that during the Mexican war thirty per cent, of the 
American army were of foreign birth, and that this 
proportion held good of the volunteers during the 
Rebellion, but that in times of peace the propor- 
tions were reversed, seventy per cent, of the recruits 
being of foreign birth. It is also stated that twenty- 
four nationalities were represented in the United 
States army, and that out of a total of a million 
two hundred and fifty thousand men actually in the 
war, there were seventy-five thousand Germans. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



89 



This is certainly very far short of the actual number, 
and is by no means borne out as accurate even by 
the estimates made by the very competent authority 
of the statistician employed by the United States 
Sanitary Commission, Dr. B. A. Gould, whose tables 
are based upon very careful mathematical data, and 
come as near the truth as can be expected in the 
absence of absolute returns. 

The United States Sanitary Commission, in addi- 
tion to its other good work, has published " Investi- 
gations in the Statistics of American Soldiers," by 
B. A. Gould (New York, 1869), of which one chapter 
is devoted to the nativity of the United States Volun- 
teers (chap, ii., pp. 15-26). It gives a suggestive list 
of the arrivals of aliens in the United States, as fol- 
lows : 

i860 153.640 

1861 112,705 

1862 114,475 

1863 199,811 

1864 221,535 

Thirty in each hundred alien passengers before 
1 86 1, and thirty-three in each hundred during the 

war, were males of military age, and the total for 

8* 



Q THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

the years of the war may be placed at two hundred 
and twenty-nine thousand five hundred and thirty- 
two. 

It was not until the war had been waged for some 
time that the place of birth was systematically re- 
quired on the enlistment rolls ; the actual records 
are therefore very imperfect, and as many men en- 
listed at different times for different periods, — in one 
instance five times, — even regimental statistics are 
misleading. It was not until the organization of 
the provost-marshal-general's office that nativity 
was made an essential element of the history of 
each soldier. Out of the two and a half million of 
men in the army, the nativities of about one million 
two hundred thousand have been collected for Dr. 
Gould's work from the records at the national and 
State capitals, of about two hundred and ninety-three 
thousand from regimental officers. In Missouri it 
was estimated that there were ten thousand re-enlist- 
ments among the German population ; but making 
due allowance for these, the Sanitary Commission 
gives the following table of Germans, volunteers in 
the different regiments from the States, and in the 
parallel column that of the proportion the Germans 
would have borne to the native and other nationalities 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



91 



in the populations of each State ; and I have added 
the German population from the census of i860 in 
another column : 



Total German 



Number of 
From German Soldiers. 


Proportion to 
whole Population. 


Population. 
Census of 186c 


Maine .... 


244 


34 


2,6oi 


New Hampshire . 


952 


35 


412 


Vermont 


86 


19 


219 


Massachusetts 


1,876 


860 


9,961 


Rhode Island and Con- 
necticut . 


2,919 


rR. I. 

1 Conn. 


845 
8,525 


New York . 


36,680 


22,591 


256,252 


New Jersey . 


7,387 


3,°97 


33,772 


Pennsylvania 


17,208 


13,173 


138,244 


Delaware 


621 


139 


1,263 


Maryland 


3, io 7 


2,373 


43,884 


District of Columbia 


746 


643 


3,254 


West Virginia 


869 


194 (Va.) 


IO,5I2 


Kentucky 


i,943 


1,276 


27,227 


Ohio . ■ . 


20,102 


18,984 


l68,2IO 


Indiana 


. 7,190 


7,793 


66,705 


Illinois 


18,140 


16,647 


130,804 


Michigan 


• 3,534 


3,793 


38,787 


Wisconsin . 


. 15,709 


12,729 


123,879 


Minnesota . 


• 2,715 


2,172 


18,400 


Iowa . 


. 2,850 


3,239 


38,555 


Missouri 


. 30,899 


7,105 


88,487 


Kansas 


1,090 


692 


4,318 


A grand total of 


. 187,858 


128,102 


I,Il8,402 



9 2 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



And as against this there were 



Proportion Volunteers, 
to Population. 

British Americans .... 22,695 53>53 2 

English 38,250 45,508 

Irish 139,052 144,221 

Other foreigners .... 39,455 48,410 

Foreigners not otherwise designated . 278 26,445 

Adding to these native Americans 1,523,267, 
makes a total of 2,018,200 soldiers whose nativity- 
is thus established, out of the 2,500,000 in the 
Union army. 

Part of the unwritten history of the war for the 
Union is the result of the firm stand the Germans 
took in defence of their new Fatherland. In the 
East, and still more in the West, before the Rebellion 
the German element was hardly appreciated by the 
mass of the people. With the outbreak of the war it 
asserted itself, and won a place in the consideration 
of their fellow-citizens that has been shown by their 
recognition in its government, and, to a still greater 
degree, in its social development. In the Southwest, 
notably, the Southern element was antagonistic to 
the Germans, — their industry, their frugality, their 
sobriety, their simple tastes, their love of family, 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



93 



their pride in their homes, were all elements of a civ- 
ilization unknown in that part of the country. When 
the Germans answered the appeal to support and 
defend the Union, their uprising was a surprise. 
Politicians looked unkindly on their military organ- 
izations, and were indisposed to give them a place in 
the army. The steadiness of Blenker's division at 
Bull Run gave his German regiments a consideration 
which stood them in good stead later on, when dis- 
asters befell them at Chancellorsville and at Gettys- 
burg. In the West, Sigel organized the German 
regiments and helped to save Missouri to the Union. 
The Germans who had been soldiers at home, but 
were employed peacefully throughout the country, at 
the first appeal to arms hurried to join their fellow- 
countrymen, and many others joined them who had 
recently come over here to seek their fortunes, and 
not a few whose trade was war helped to swell the 
strength of the German regiments. Asboth organ- 
ized a cavalry brigade, which did good service to the 
end. The Fourth (German) Missouri Cavalry was 
one of his regiments, and although its colonel and 
its adjutant were Americans, most of its officers and 
all of its rank and file were Germans, old soldiers, 
who soon showed their capacity to adapt the lessons 



94 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



of their old military experience to the new problems 
of the war in this country. 

The scattered settlements of Germans throughout 
Missouri made the strength of the Union men of that 
State and kept it in its place. Encouraged in turn 
by the success of their countrymen, large numbers 
of new settlers followed their example, among them 
many who had seen the future wealth of the country 
even in a time of war, and that the desolating border 
war which carries so much misery in its course. 
Now throughout Western Missouri there are thriving 
villages and prosperous towns, connected by a net- 
work of well-tilled farms, where German is the uni- 
versal element. To them the success of the Union 
cause was the guarantee of their future prosperity, 
and from their support it derived much of its best 
strength. 

Colonel Waring's attractive little book, "Whip and 
Spur" (Boston, 1875), gives an admirable sketch of the 
life in the Fourth Missouri Cavalry. Full of grace, 
charming in tone and spirit, told with the true feeling 
of a real soldier, it shows with much more vivid truth 
than most professed histories the real inner life of a 
cavalry regiment largely made up of old German 
soldiers. From its lieutenant-colonel, Von Helmrich, 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. gt 

for twenty-eight years a cavalry soldier in Germany, 
down to the Swiss trumpeter, all were imbued with 
that military spirit which makes the typical German 
soldier. Colonel Waring's story is one of rough 
campaigns, of hurrying expeditions, of hair-breadth 
'scapes, of a soldier's life in a border warfare, and it 
will preserve the fame of the Fourth Missouri Cav- 
alry when the dull records of many other regiments 
have been forgotten. It is just such a book as will 
serve to keep alive the best memories of the German 
cavalrymen in the war for the Union in the West. 

The German soldier of the West and Northwest at 
once took his right place in the army, and won for 
himself and his countrymen the respect and the affec- 
tion and the confidence of his native-born fellow-citi- 
zens. What was before a scanty permission has now 
become a matter of right, and the German, as a factor 
in both the political and social progress of the coun- 
try, owes his place to what was done and won for it 
in the war of the Rebellion. Many Germans no 
doubt came over here as a sort of freebooters, at- 
tracted by the high pay and the rapid promotion, 
and all the advantages that a volunteer army enjoyed 
over the great standing army of their native country. 
Many of them settled here, when the war was over, 



9 6 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



and became good and useful citizens, ready to do 
their share in making their new homes prosperous 
and happy. Thus, whatever their sacrifices, — and they 
were great in life and health, — their reward has been 
proportionately great, and the Germans throughout 
the civilized world owe much of their present po- 
sition, of the accepted greatness of the Empire, to the 
devotion, freely offered, of their services to the United 
States in its hour of trial, and to the example they 
then gave of fidelity to their political principles. 

The story of the German soldier in the Rebellion 
is one of the characteristic features of that varying 
struggle. In the outset in the East the enthusiasm 
of the German population in their support of the 
Union was heartily welcome. In Missouri, under 
Sigel, it was their uprising that saved that State to 
the Union, and from the Germans of Missouri and 
the Northwest there came soldiers who won the day 
against the disloyal government of the State. Fre- 
mont rallied around him bodies of German troops of 
a strange sort at first, but that later on in the war 
became useful soldiers. In New York, Blenker 
raised a regiment which soon swelled to a brigade, 
and then to a division, and might have become 
an army corps. Their steadiness in protecting the 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. gy 

retreat at the first Bull Run won for them general 
applause. Their camp in front of Washington, during 
the preparation that McClellan gave his raw troops, 
was a scene of military displays in the fashion of 
Germany, little known or appreciated by our work- 
a-day army, but largely admired by spectators from 
far and near. 

The successive ill fortune of the German troops 
under Sigel in the valley of Virginia, and under 
Howard at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, was fully 
atoned for by their share in the operations under 
Sherman. From being overpraised at the outset 
they were afterwards unjustly overblamed, and the 
truth undoubtedly rested between the two extremes. 
There were incompetent officers and inefficient 
soldiers in their number in the outset, but these 
were gradually weeded out, and in the end it can 
fairly be said that the German soldiers in the Rebel- 
lion contributed largely to the success that finally 
crowned the war. To give a detailed account of so 
large a number, scattered over such an extent of 
country, would be impossible, but a few shining ex- 
amples may serve the purpose. 

In a pamphlet issued by the War Department in 
1885, there is given the local designation of volun- 

9 



9 8 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



teer organizations in the United States army dur- 
ing the war of the Rebellion, 1860-65, which is of 
interest, as showing in part the nationality of 
troops. 

In New York : 

Dickel's Mounted Rifles, Fourth New York 
Cavalry. 

Blenker's Battery, Second Battery Light Artillery, 
New York. 

Steuben Regiment, Seventh New York Infantry. 

First German Rifles, Eighth New York Infantry. 

United Turner Rifles, Twentieth New York In- 
fantry. 

First Astor Regiment, Twenty-ninth New York 
Infantry. 

Fifth German Rifles, Forty-fifth New York In- 
fantry. 

Fremont Regiment, Forty-sixth New York In- 
fantry. 

Sigel Rifles, or German Rangers, Fifty-second 
New York Infantry. 

Barney Rifles, or Schwartze Yager Regiment, 
Fifty-fourth New York Infantry. 

Steuben Rangers, Eighty-sixth New York Infantry. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. gg 

In Pennsylvania : 

First German Regiment, Seventy-fourth Pennsyl- 
vania Infantry. 

Second German Regiment, Seventy-fifth Pennsyl- 
vania Infantry. 

In Ohio: 

First German Regiment, Twenty-eighth Ohio In- 
fantry. 

Second German Regiment, Thirty-seventh Ohio 
Infantry, Colonel Siber. 

Third German Regiment, Sixty-seventh Ohio In- 
fantry, Colonel Burstenbinder. 

In Indiana: 

First German Regiment, Thirty-second Indiana, 
commanded, successively, by Willich, Von Trebra, 
and Erdelmeyer. 

In Illinois: 

Hecker's Yager Regiment, Twenty-fourth Illinois. 

In Wisconsin : 

First German Regiment, Ninth Wisconsin. 
Second German Regiment, Twenty-sixth Wis- 
consin. 



I00 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

Bates's History of the Pennsylvania Regiments, 
etc., in the Rebellion, is a huge work of five enor- 
mous volumes, and from its endless pages there is 
much material to be gathered bearing on the Ger- 
man element in the war. Pennsylvania naturally 
claims for its citizens of German descent, including 
those whose ancestors were among the early settlers, 
a place in any tribute to the German soldiers. 
Among the first five companies organized in Penn- 
sylvania at the very outset, there were many Penn- 
sylvania Germans ; and of the twenty-five regiments 
raised for the three months' service, there were the 
Fourth, with Hartranft as its colonel, from Norris- 
town and Pottstown ; the Eighth, from Lehigh and 
Northampton; the Ninth, from Chester and Dela- 
ware, with Pennypacker; the Tenth, from Lancaster; 
the Eleventh, from Northumberland ; the Fourteenth, 
from Berks ; the Fifteenth, from Luzerne ; the Six- 
teenth, from York and Schuylkill ; the Eighteenth, 
in Philadelphia, under Wilhelm; the Twenty-first, 
under Ballier, largely made up of Germans. 

Of the three-year regiments, those who bore the 
brunt of the war, there was the Twenty-seventh, 
which gained credit from and for Bushbeck ; while of 
the fifteen regiments of the Pennsylvania Reserves, 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. I0I 

the largest organized force, indeed the only division 
sent by one State to the field, many of its members 
were Germans by birth or descent, — and so, too, of 
the Forty-eighth, from Schuylkill ; the Fiftieth, from 
Berks ; the Fifty-first, under Hartranft, from Mont- 
gomery ; the Fifty-sixth, under Hoffman ; the Sixty- 
fifth, better known as the Fifth Cavalry ; the Seventy- 
fourth, from Pittsburg; the Seventy-fifth, under Boh- 
len; the Seventy-ninth, from Lancaster; the Eighty- 
eighth, from Berks and Philadelphia, with General 
Louis Wagner; the Ninety-sixth, from Schuylkill; 
the Ninety-seventh, under Pennypacker, from Chester 
and Delaware ; the Ninety-eighth, the old Twenty- 
first reorganized, under Ballier, thoroughly German 
in rank and file; the One Hundred and Twelfth, or 
Second Artillery, — so large a regiment that out of it 
a second regiment was organized; the One Hundred 
and Thirteenth, or Twelfth Cavalry, and the One 
Hundred and Fifty-second, or Third Artillery, — 
almost distinctively German. Then there were the 
One Hundred and Thirtieth, from York ; the One 
Hundred and Thirty-first, from Northumberland ; 
and the One Hundred and Fifty-third, from North- 
ampton, — it was brigaded under Sigel, Stahel, and 
Von Gilsa, with the New York regiments of Salm, 

9* 



I02 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

Holmstedt, and Von Amsberg, and the Eighty- 
second Illinois, of Hecker, — nothing could point 
more conclusively to the German element in the war 
than such names as these. 

The One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Pennsylvania 
Volunteers, from Berks, was organized and com- 
manded by Charles A. Knoderer. 

This is a fair proportion of the two hundred and 
fifteen regiments, nine batteries, two independent 
companies, and eleven colored regiments raised in 
Pennsylvania, and even a hasty glance at the long 
list of names of officers and men of the successive 
regiments will show a large German element scat- 
tered throughout them. One of the best elements of 
the little regular army was the supply of excellent 
non-commissioned officers, largely old German sol- 
diers, and it was a great stroke of good fortune when 
a volunteer company had one of these well-trained 
and well-disciplined men in its ranks, — he steadied 
the whole line, and gave it an example of soldierly 
excellence in every particular. 

Such a man was Edward Scherer, first sergeant of 
Company B, of the One Hundred and Twenty-first 
Pennsylvania Volunteers, — a German who had served 
in a battery of the Third United States Artillery, 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. IC> 3 

under some of the most distinguished officers of the 
regular army. Such men as Reynolds and Burnside 
recognized him as an old comrade, and his bearing 
and gallantry and knowledge of the real business 
of soldiering were the object of universal admira- 
tion among the green hands, both officers and men, 
of his regiment. He fell at the battle of Fred- 
ericksburg, Virginia, and he was but a type of that 
large number of German soldiers who served in the 
ranks, and who, like Scherer, sacrificed good em- 
ployment at home to do their duty to the country 
of their adoption at its hour of supreme peril and 
trial. 

A characteristic and distinguished example of the 
services rendered by our Pennsylvanians of German 
descent is the brilliant career of General G. Penny- 
packer, of the Ninth and the Ninety-seventh Penn- 
sylvania Volunteers. Born in 1842, at Valley 
Forge, he was one of the descendants of Heinrich 
Pannebacker, who came to America from Germany 
before 1699, and settled on Skippack Creek. Many 
of this family settled in the adjoining counties of 
Montgomery, Chester, and Berks, and of the later 
generations not a few found their way into Vir- 
ginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, where 



104 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



their names are found in positions of importance and 
trust. 

On the rolls of those who served in the Revolu- 
tion and the later wars of the Republic, there are 
many representatives of this old German stock. The 
Pennypacker war record is a notable one. During 
the Revolution this family had as its representatives 
in the Continental army, a captain, an ensign, a lieu- 
tenant, a corporal, and a private. In the war of 
1812 it had two of its members in the field; in the 
Mexican war, three. In the war of the Rebellion 
it furnished to the Union army two major-generals, 
one adjutant-general, one colonel, one surgeon, one 
assistant surgeon, two captains, one lieutenant, five 
sergeants, eight corporals, one musician, and sixty- 
five privates. To the Southern army it gave one 
lieutenant-colonel, one quartermaster, four captains, 
five lieutenants, and twenty-eight enlisted men, — a 
total of one hundred and twenty-eight. No doubt 
this list could be increased if all branches of the old 
stock reported their military contingent. At all 
events it is worth pointing out, that others may try 
to parallel it by a diligent search through their own 
records for other examples of the kind. The great- 
grandfather of General Pennypacker was a bishop of 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 105 

the Mennonite Church ; his father was on the staff of 
General Worth in the Mexican war. At the age of 
eighteen, after he had begun life as a printer, young 
Pennypacker became a member of a local volunteer 
company, and marched with it to Harrisburg on the 
first summons for troops in 186 1, serving with it in 
the Ninth Regiment. He soon became captain and 
then major of the reorganized regiment in the three- 
years' service, the Ninety-seventh, and bravely fought 
his way through the war, became colonel of the regi- 
ment, was soon put in command of a brigade, won his 
star as a brigadier-general for his gallantry at the cap- 
ture of Fort Fisher, at twenty-two was the youngest 
general officer in the war, and was brevetted a major- 
general. In 1866 he quietly settled down to study 
law, when he was appointed colonel of the Thirty- 
fourth Infantry in the regular army, then assigned to 
the Sixteenth ; he was the youngest colonel in the 
regular army, and finally retired in 1883 at an age 
when with most men a career of distinction such as 
his is usually just beginning. 

Zinn, of the One Hundred and Thirtieth; Schall, 
of the Fifty-first, one of eight brothers in the army; 
Brenholz, of the Fiftieth; Gries, of the One Hun- 
dred and Fourth; Kohler, of the Ninety-eighth, were 



I0 6 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

all of Pennsylvania birth, but of German descent. 
Knoderer, of the One Hundred and Sixty-eighth, 
was born in Baden, was educated at Carlsruhe, at 
the Polytechnical School, and left the service of the 
government to join Sigel's force in the unsuccessful 
revolution of 1849. In Reading (Pennsylvania) he 
found a new home and employment as a civil engi- 
neer; but when the Rebellion broke out he went 
first as a captain of engineers on Sigel's staff, then 
enlisted as a private and was elected colonel of the 
Eleventh Pennsylvania, and afterwards was appointed 
colonel of the One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Penn- 
sylvania, and fell at its head on the 30th January, 
1863, near Suffolk, Virginia. 

Ballier was born in Wurtemberg in 1815 ; studied 
at the Military School at Stuttgard in 1833-34; set- 
tled in Philadelphia, where he was a member of the 
Washington Guard, the first German military organi- 
zation in the North, in 1836; enlisted as a private in 
the First Pennsylvania for the Mexican war, was 
made major for his services there, — then was colonel 
of the Twenty-first and of the Ninety-eighth for the 
Rebellion. Twice seriously wounded, he still re- 
mains with us to renew the recollection of his varied 
experiences, a veteran of many battles. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. l0 y 

Hartranft's commission as brigadier-general was 
won by his services at Bull Run, Antietam, Freder- 
icksburg; and as the hero of Fort Stedman he be- 
came a major-general. His services in civil life have 
been equally distinguished, and his career is marked 
by well-earned honors, as Governor of Pennsylvania, 
as the chief representative of the Federal Govern- 
ment in Philadelphia, and as the head of the State 
militia. 

Everard Bierer, colonel of the One Hundred and 
Seventy-first Pennsylvania, was the son of German 
parents, settled in Fayette County. He won his first 
successes in the Eleventh Pennsylvania Reserves, 
was appointed by Governor Curtin to be colonel of 
the One Hundred and Seventy-first, and was pro- 
moted to the command of a brigade. Now he 
is a successful lawyer, legislator, and farmer in 
Kansas. 

Colonel Lehmann, of the One Hundred and Third, 
was born in Hanover in 1812, was educated there at 
the military school, served for six years in the army, 
and in 1837 came to Pittsburg, where he became a 
teacher. He organized the Sixty-second Pennsylva- 
nia, was its lieutenant-colonel, then was colonel of 
the One Hundred and Third, and after the war re- 



I0 8 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

sumed his work of education, and became president 
of the Western Pennsylvania Military Academy. 

The Wistars who served in the war by the half a 
score were all of that good old German stock whose 
representatives are so well and honorably known in 
every walk of life in their native city and far beyond it. 

Philadelphia sent General Isaac J. Wistar, colonel 
of the Seventy-first Pennsylvania ; Major Joseph W. 
Wistar, of the Eighth Pennsylvania Cavalry ; Colo- 
nel Francis Wistar, captain of the Twelfth United 
States Infantry, and colonel of the Two Hundred 
and Fifteenth Pennsylvania ; Colonel Langhorne Wis- 
tar, captain of the First Pennsylvania Rifles, " Buck- 
tails," colonel of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Penn- 
sylvania, and brevet brigadier-general ; Colonel Wil- 
liam Rotch Wistar, of the Twentieth Pennsylvania 
Cavalry. 

William Doster, colonel of the Fourth Cavalry, 
was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where his 
father, a native of Swabia, settled in 1817, marrying 
the daughter of a Vorsteher of the Brethren's 
House, the granddaughter of a Revolutionary sol- 
dier. A graduate of Yale of '57, and of the Har- 
vard Law School of '59, he studied law in Heidel- 
berg and Paris. Returning to this country, he 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. l0 g 

became major of the Fourth Pennsylvania Cavalry, 
led it in the Chancellorsville and Gettysburg cam- 
paigns, and was promoted for his services. 

General J. William Hofmann, colonel of the Fifty- 
sixth Pennsylvania, was the son of Prussian parents, 
who settled in Philadelphia in 1819. Long an active 
member of local militia organizations, he went to the 
field a thorough soldier, and his career was one of 
distinguished gallantry, characterized alike by merit 
and modesty. The opinion of all his superior offi- 
cers was an unbroken and unanimous approval of his 
ability and his courage, and he deserves, as he has 
won, and he enjoys, the respect of his fellow-citizens 
for the distinguished services he rendered in all the 
responsible positions assigned him during his long 
period of active service. 

General Adolph Bushbeck was .born in Coblenz, 
Prussia, in 1822, the son of a German officer. From 
his eleventh to his seventeenth year he was at the 
cadet school in Berlin, then became ensign and lieu- 
tenant, and at the suggestion of Steinwehr was ap- 
pointed instructor at the cadet school at Potsdam, 
from 1847 to 1852. In 1853 he came to Philadel- 
phia, and was well and favorably known as a suc- 
cessful teacher. When the Rebellion broke out he 

10 



IIO THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

became major, and later colonel of the Twenty- 
seventh Pennsylvania, and in that and his successive 
commands, as general of brigade and division, won 
unstinted praise for his high soldierly qualities. 
From General Sherman he received warm commen- 
dation. The war over, he returned to Philadelphia, 
and resumed his former occupation for some years, 
and then, going abroad with his family, died in Flor- 
ence, Italy, in 1883. 

Henry Bohlen was born in Bremen in 18 10. As 
early as 183 1, on the recommendation of Lafayette, 
he was appointed on the staff of General Gerard, 
and served during the siege of Antwerp. In the 
Mexican war he served on the staff of General 
Worth, and took part in many engagements. In 
the Crimean war he served in the French army, and 
at the outbreak of the Rebellion, returning from 
Europe, where he was living in great splendor, enjoy- 
ing a large fortune and a brilliant social position, he 
raised the Seventy-fifth, a German regiment, mainly 
at his own expense, and led it with such distinguished 
gallantry that he was commended in warm terms by 
Fremont and Sigel, under whom he served, and was 
soon appointed a brigadier-general. His brilliant 
career ended in his death in action, in August, 1862. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. IIX 

The Vezins — Oscar, Henry, Alfred — served with 
credit in various branches of the service, always 
doing honor to a name that belongs to one of the 
oldest merchants of Philadelphia in its days of great- 
ness as a commercial city. 

Henry Vezin was captain Company G, Fifth Penn- 
sylvania Cavalry; Alfred, captain Company C, Fif- 
teenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, and afterwards adju- 
tant Fourth Missouri Cavalry. 

The name of General John A. Koltes is perpetu- 
ated in that of the Post No. 228 of the Grand Army 
of the Republic, which thus does due honor to that 
gallant soldier. He organized the Seventy-third 
Regiment, originally known as the Pennsylvania 
Legion, Forty-fifth of the line. It was recruited in 
Philadelphia, in June and July, 1861, and was first at 
a rendezvous at Lemon Hill. Colonel Koltes, Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Muehleck, Major Schott, were the 
field-officers. It joined Blenker's division in Sep- 
tember, and went with it through the West Virginia 
campaign under Fremont and Sigel, and then under 
Pope into the second Bull Run. Koltes was in com- 
mand of the brigade, and Brueckner of the regiment, 
when they both fell in action on the 30th of August, 
1862, gallantly leading their men against an over- 



II2 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

whelming force. General Schurz, in his report as 
division commander, commends the conduct of 
Koltes and his brigade, temporarily attached to his 
division. It consisted of the Sixty-eighth New 
York, the Twenty-ninth New York, and the Seventy- 
third Pennsylvania, with Dilger's Battery. He says, 
" The gallant Koltes died a noble death at the head 
of his brave regiments," and he deplores " the brave 
and noble Koltes." General Sigel, who commanded 
the First Corps, regrets, in his report, " the death of 
the intrepid Koltes." 

General Koltes was born in Treves in 1827, and 
came to this country while he was still a lad, in his 
seventeenth year. He became a teacher in a Catholic 
institute in Pittsburg, enlisted in 1846 as a volunteer 
in the Mexican war, and afterwards in the regular 
army. On his return he was employed in the United 
States Mint, became a member of the Scott Legion, 
and took an active part in the local militia. He 
drilled the Mannerchor Rifle Guards for home ser- 
vice, and recruited a regiment for the war. He re- 
ceived a commission as brigadier-general, and it was 
at the head of his brigade that he fell in action at 
the second Bull Run. Koltes was, like Ballier, 
Binder, and Bohlen, one of the active spirits in the 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. n3 

early military organizations in Philadelphia. Besides 
the Philadelphia regiments, they furnished for the 
war four companies of Philadelphia Turners, who 
joined their comrades in the Turner Regiment, or- 
ganized in New York under Colonel Soest, and many 
went into New Jersey regiments and those of other 
States. 

Among the young Germans of Philadelphia, Fritz 
Tiedeman has a high place for his gallant services. 
He was, successively, quartermaster-sergeant, second 
lieutenant, adjutant, and captain of the Seventy-fifth 
Pennsylvania, and then on the staff of General 
Schurz; and his brother, who fell early in the war, 
gave promise of equal merit. 

General Louis Wagner was born in Giessen, 
Germany, in 1838, and came to Philadelphia as a 
lad with his father, a revolutionary refugee, in 1849. 
Educated at the public schools, in 1 861 he entered 
the service as a first lieutenant of the Eighty-eighth 
Pennsylvania Volunteers, and at the close was 
colonel of the regiment and a brevet brigadier-gen- 
eral. Returning to civil life, he organized the Grand 
Army of the Republic in Pennsylvania, in 1879, and 
has been one of the leading men of that organization 

ever since. He has taken a very active part in other 

10* 



U 4 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

civil and military bodies, and has been honored by 
many elective offices and appointments, all of which 
he has filled with characteristic zeal and energy. 

New York, as the gathering place of all nationali- 
ties, naturally sent many Germans to the army. The 
Thirty-ninth, or Garibaldi Guard, consisted of three 
companies of Germans, three of Hungarians, one 
each of Swiss, Italians, and French, and one of Span- 
ish and Portuguese. 

The Seventh Regiment Infantry, New York State 
Volunteers, or " Steuben Rangers," organized by 
Colonel John E. Bendix, and reorganized by Colonel 
G. von Schach, had, as its original officers, Lieutenant- 
Colonel Edward KapfT, Major C. Keller, and Captains 
Goebel, Boecht, Brestel, Pfeiffer, Anselm, Hocheimer, 
S. L. Kapff, Schonleber, Bethan, Wratislau. 

The Eighth, or " First German Rifles," was organ- 
ized by Blenker, who commanded a brigade at {he 
first Bull Run, and a division under Fremont in 
the valley campaign. It was in Sigel's corps in the 
second Battle of Bull Run. 

The Twentieth, or " United Turner Rifles," was 
organized by the New York Turn-Verein, in April, 
1861, from its societies. German citizens provided 
the money for its expenses ; a committee of ladies, 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. n c 

called the " Turner-sisters," supplied many necessa- 
ries. Max Weber was its colonel, Franz Weiss lieu- 
tenant-colonel, and Englebert Schnepf major. 

The Twenty-ninth, or " Astor Rifles," was organ- 
ized by Steinwehr, who, in his farewell order, says it 
was the last to leave the field at Bull Run, and served 
with distinction under Fremont, Sigel, and at Chan- 
cellorsville, and earned a place in the history of the 
war. 

The Fifth New York State Militia was a German 
organization, — its officers were, Colonel Schwarzwal- 
der, Lieutenant-Colonel Burger, Major von Amsberg. 

Of the Forty-first, or De Kalb Guards, Colonel 
von Gilsa, seven hundred of its men had been in the 
Prussian service in the Schleswig-Holstein war. One 
company was raised in Philadelphia, and another in 
Newark, New Jersey. 

The Fifty-second Regiment Infantry, New York 
State Volunteers, was organized at Staten Island, 
New York, in the autumn of 1861, by the consolida- 
tion of four companies of the " Sigel Rifles," and 
six companies of the " German Rangers," under 
Colonel Paul Frank. 

The commanders of companies were : 

A. Captain Charles G. Freudenberg. 



U6 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

B. Captain Henry L. Klein. 

C. Captain Gustave Schultze. 

D. Captain Oscar von Schoening. 

E. Captain J. C. Messerschmidt. 

F. Captain Charles Mohring. 

G. Captain O. C. Garvvin. 
H. Captain Jacob Rueger. 

I. Captain Adolphus Becker. 

K. Captain Francis Benzler. 

The lieutenant-colonel was Louis Kasouzki ; major, 
Philip C. Lichtenstein. 

A national flag, a regimental flag, and two guidons 
were presented by the German ladies of New York. 

It formed part of the Third Brigade, First Divis- 
ion, Second Corps, was brigaded with the Fifty- 
seventh and Sixty-sixth New York, and Fifty-third 
Pennsylvania, under Sumner, French, Zook, and 
Frank. 

At Antietam it lost its lieutenant-colonel, Lichten- 
stein ; at Gettysburg, its brigade commander, Zook; in 
the Wilderness campaign under Hancock, two gal- 
lant Germans, Count Hacke and Baron von Steuben, 
both officers of the Prussian army, serving as volun- 
teers in that of the Union. Count Hacke was a 
brave and gentle comrade, of kind, modest, and un- 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. ny 

assuming manners, endeared to his fellow-soldiers 
by his manly virtues. His epitaph is written in the 
hearts of all who knew him, as a brave and true 
soldier, who fell in battle for a noble cause. 

In October of 1864, the remnant of the original 
Fifty-second, five officers and thirty-five men, under 
Major Retzius, returned to New York. Colonel 
Frank, promoted to be a brigadier-general, was suc- 
ceeded by Colonel Karples, and under him the 
regiment was finally mustered out in July, 1865. Of 
the two thousand eight hundred whose names 
appear on its rolls, only two hundred returned; 
thirty-four of its officers were killed or disabled dur- 
ing its four years of service. 

The Military Order of the Loyal Legion is for the 
Union army what the Society of the Cincinnati was 
for the Revolutionary army. Its records preserve 
and perpetuate the memories of many gallant sol- 
diers. Among them is to be found a sketch of the 
life and services of Carl Gottfried Freudenberg. Born 
in Heidelberg, Germany, May 1, 1833, at an early 
age he entered the military service as a cadet in the 
Carlsruhe School. While there the revolution of 
1848 broke out, and, although but fifteen, he took 
the field with his fellow-students, and was engaged 



U3 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

in the battle fought near Mannheim. As his mind 
matured it developed such conclusions upon political 
liberty as impelled him to forego brilliant prospects 
of preferment, and he came to the United States a 
few years before the great Rebellion. When a call 
was issued for soldiers he raised a company of in- 
fantry, and with it entered the service as captain of 
the Fifty-second New York Volunteer Infantry, Au- 
gust 3, 1 86 1. On the 9th of November he became 
its major, and was severely wounded at the battle 
of Fair Oaks. On November 24, 1862, he was pro- 
moted lieutenant-colonel, and commanded his regi- 
ment at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, where he 
was again desperately wounded. Forced to leave 
the field by his injuries, he resigned his commission 
in the Fifty-second New York and accepted an ap- 
pointment as major in the Veteran Reserve Corps, 
organized the Twenty-third Regiment, and on April 
22, 1864, became its lieutenant-colonel, serving in 
the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned 
Lands, as commandant at Milwaukee, as inspector- 
general and commandant of the District of Wiscon- 
sin. On the reorganization of the army he was ap- 
pointed captain of the Forty-fifth (Veteran Reserve) 
Infantry; in 1869 was transferred to the Fourteenth 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. £ IO/ 

Infantry, was brevetted colonel of volunteers, and as 
major and lieutenant-colonel of the regular army. 
In May, 1870, he went with his regiment to the 
Northwest, to quell a threatened Indian outbreak, 
but in December he was obliged to go on the retired 
list as captain, and in 1877 he was promoted lieu- 
tenant-colonel. He died in Washington, August 28, 
1885, enjoying the confidence and affection of all 
who knew him, as the very embodiment of personal 
honor and soldierly virtue. 

One of the most effective services rendered the 
cause of the Union was the long series of political 
cartoons furnished to Harper's Weekly during the 
civil war by Thomas Nast, born on the Rhine in 
1840. His pencil was recognized far and wide as 
that of a sturdy champion, and his productions were 
heartily welcomed by the soldiers in the field and 
by earnest patriots everywhere. Thomas Nast was 
born in Landau, Bavaria, September 27, 1840, and 
came with his mother to New York in 1846, and 
was there joined in 1849 D > r ms father, who had 
served on the man-of-war " Ohio." He began to 
work on Frank Leslie's illustrated paper, studied in 
the Academy of Design, made a campaign with Gari- 
baldi in i860, sending sketches to the New York, 



120 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



London, and Paris illustrated papers, returning to 
New York in 1861. His contributions to Harper's 
Weekly became historical, and have received the 
well-merited praise of historians and art critics. 
They were useful in keeping alive the loyal feeling 
of the North, and received the hearty plaudits of the 
soldiers in the field. When peace was restored he 
won new honors in the civil contest that waged 
over Andrew Johnson's administration, and even now 
he fights for good government with his pencil. 

The Princess Salm-Salm, in her book, "Ten Years 
of My Life," — and a very adventurous one it was, — 
describes the camp of the German division (Blen- 
ker's) in front of Washington, in the fall of 1861, as 
the principal point of attraction. It consisted of 
about twelve thousand men, under Blenker and Stein- 
wehr, who had gained great credit for protecting the 
retreat from the first Bull Run. Blenker was born in 
Tours, had served in the Bavarian army and in that 
of Greece under its Bavarian king, took part in the 
German revolution of '48, fled to Switzerland, then 
came to New York, and was farming when the Re- 
bellion broke out. He raised the Eighth New York, 
and Prussian and Austrian soldiers furnished a con- 
siderable proportion of its officers, among them 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. I2 i 

Prince Salm-Salm, who served to the end of the 
war, then in Mexico, and finally fell in the Franco- 
Prussian war. Another of his officers was Corvin, 
who, after six years in Prussian prisons as a penalty 
for his share in the German revolution, came to this 
country as the war correspondent of the London 
Times and the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. 

Among other German officers were von der 
Groeben; von Schack, colonel of the Seventh New 
York; von Buggenhagen, one of its captains; von 
Radowitz, Schwenke, Gerber, Max Weber; Schirmer, 
chief of artillery of the Eleventh Corps; von Putt- 
kammer, of the Third Corps ; von Amsberg, von 
Gilsa, von Kusserow, von Kleisser; von Schrader, 
of the Seventy-fourth Ohio, killed in action ; von 
Trebra, of the Thirty-second Indiana ; and Leppien, 
lieutenant-colonel of the First Maine Artillery, one 
of the most gallant soldiers, from Philadelphia. 

Carl Schurz was the first colonel of the first regi- 
ment of volunteer cavalry duly authorized to be 
raised. On his way to New York he found Chor- 
man's Rangers also inviting recruits, while other 
cavalry companies were being busily raised in Phila- 
delphia. In New York he found additional coun- 
trymen at work, — Frederick von Schickfuss, August 



122 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



Haurand, Count Haake, von Blankenburg, Bern de 
Tavergnier, von Strautz, von Veltheim, Count Fer- 
dinand Storch, and Count von Moltke, Hendricks, 
Passegger, Hertzog, — who soon found plenty of men. 
Schurz himself went to Spain as minister, and the 
regiment was fortunate in having for its first colonel 
in the field A. T. M. Reynolds, a very^ good, experi- 
enced soldier. The four companies of Germans were 
all old soldiers. Their record through the war is a 
very creditable one, and the First New York Cav- 
alry did its work so well that Germans may be proud 
of their countrymen in it both from New York and 
Pennsylvania. 

The German element in the cavalry and artillery 
went far to make both of these arms of the service 
efficient and capable. In every regiment of cayalry 
and in every battery of artillery there were found old 
German soldiers, trained in a way that made them 
models for the green recruits, and instructors alike 
of officers and men. In most of the regiments of 
the regular army there were privates and non-com- 
missioned officers, Germans by birth and soldiers by 
training, who were looked on with the respect that 
courage and discipline always secure. Many of 
them were promoted to commissions, and some of 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



123 



them commanded volunteer regiments with great 
credit. One of the most notable trained and veteran 
German soldiers was Adolph von Steinwehr, who 
was born September 25, 1825, at Blankenburg in 
Brunswick. His father was a major, his grandfather 
a lieutenant-general. He studied in the military 
school, became a lieutenant, came to the United 
States, and served as an officer of an Alabama regi- 
ment during the Mexican war. He was employed 
as an engineer by the United States, married in 
Mobile, returned to Germany, and then became a 
farmer in Connecticut. At the outbreak of the civil 
war he became colonel of the Twenty-ninth New 
York, part of the Germans that excited interest and 
admiration by their steadiness at the first Bull Run. 
This led to the organization of a German division 
under Blenker, — the First Brigade under Stahel : the 
Eighth, Wutschel; Thirty-ninth, D'Utassy; and Forty- 
fifth, von Amsberg, New York ; and Twenty-seventh 
Pennsylvania, Bushbeck; Second Brigade, Steinwehr: 
Twenty-ninth, Kozlay ; Fifty-fourth, Kryzanowsky; 
Fifty-eighth, Gellman, New York; Seventy-third 
Pennsylvania, Koltes; Third Brigade, Bohlen: Forty- 
first, Von Gilsa, and Sixty-eighth New York, Klee- 
fisch; Seventy-fourth, Schimmelpfennig; Seventy-fifth 



124 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN I HE 

Pennsylvania, Mahler; Fourth New York Cavalry, 
Dickel ; batteries of Schirmer, Wilderich, and Sturm- 
fels. There were changes in the organization in 
which Sigel and Schurz obtained successive com- 
mands. Finally at Chancellorsville the tide turned, 
and the Germans of the Eleventh Corps were spoken 
of as if the ill-fortune of the battle was due to them. 
Steinwehr, however, was always honored for the con- 
duct of his troops, and at Gettysburg again his mili- 
tary reputation was enhanced by his services. Under 
Sherman he won fresh honors in the West, and 
served in the army until the close of the war. From 
that time until his death in 1877 he was engaged in 
the work of authorship on subjects for which his 
thorough training especially fitted him. His char- 
acter was marked by many manly qualities, and his 
name is an enduring example of German patriotism, 
soldiership, and culture. 

Leopold von Gilsa, colonel of the Forty-first New 
York Volunteers, the De Kalb regiment, was a 
typical German soldier. Born in Prussia in 1825, 
the son of a Prussian officer, he served in that army, 
for which he was specially educated, became a major 
in the Schleswig-Holstein war, and soon afterwards 
came to this country. He was peaceably employed 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



25 



in teaching when the Rebellion broke out, and 
then he organized his regiment, and won for it the 
distinction of a thoroughly well-disciplined and ca- 
pable body of good soldiers. Wounded at Cross 
Keys, he gained the confidence and admiration of 
his superiors by the way in which he handled his 
regiment and the brigade, and by his services as chief 
of staff to General Sigel when he was in command 
of the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps. He served until 
1864, when he was mustered out as colonel, although 
he had served as commander of brigade and division. 
Returning to civil life, he died in New York in 1870, 
in consequence of the wounds and exposure inci- 
dental to four years of almost uninterrupted cam- 
paign life, marches, and battles. Gilsa Post, No. 264, 
of the Grand Army of the Republic, fitly marks by 
the adoption of his name the honor intended to be 
paid his memory by those who could best appreciate 
his services to his adopted country and his example 
of the devotion of his life to the cause in which he 
and his countrymen were united. 

The First New York Battalion of Light Artillery, 
known as Brickel's Artillery, was composed of four 
batteries, all Germans, — Major Brickel, Captains Diet- 
rich, Voegelin, Knierim, and Kusserow. After An- 



12 6 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

tietam, where Major Arndt, commander of the bat- 
talion, was killed, the batteries were made indepen- 
dent, and were numbered Twenty-ninth, Thirtieth, 
Thirty-first, and Thirty-second. The Twenty-ninth 
was afterwards consolidated with the Thirty-second, 
Captain von Kusserow. Captain Kleisser was pro- 
moted to command of the Thirtieth, and the Thirty- 
first was subsequently consolidated with the Thirtieth. 
In 1865, Kusserow was appointed colonel of the Sec- 
ond Regiment of Hancock's Veteran Corps. The 
Twenty-ninth and Thirty-second Batteries were con- 
solidated with the Fourth and Fifteenth Indepen- 
dent Batteries, but retained the number Thirty-second. 
Von Kusserow was an old officer of the Prussian 
army, the son of General von Kusserow. He died 
in Philadelphia, and was buried in presence of the 
German consul, Major Mergenthaler, and H. Dieck, 
his old comrades in arms. 

Colorado had forty-two Germans in the Second 
Regiment, besides others whose nationalities are 
given as Austria, Prussia, Poland, Denmark, Swe- 
den, Russia, Norway, Bohemia, Saxony, Holland, 
Bavaria, and Switzerland ; so that even on the bor- 
ders the proportion of foreigners was a very large one. 

Among the notable officers from Illinois, besides 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. l2 y 

Hecker, whose memory deserves especial mention, 
there was General Knobelsdorfif, a graduate of the 
military school at Culm, Prussia, who was a lieuten- 
ant in the Prussian army, joined the Schleswig-Hol- 
stein army, and came with hundreds of his comrades 
to the United States in 185 1. He lived in Milwau- 
kee and Chicago, and when the Rebellion broke out 
organized the Twenty-fourth and Forty-fourth Illi- 
nois, commanded a brigade in Sigel's corps, under 
Asboth, and had under him Colonel Nicholas Greu- 
sel, of the Seventh and Thirty-sixth Illinois, and 
Colonel Julius C. Raith, of the Forty-third. The 
Thirteenth Illinois Cavalry was also largely a Ger- 
man organization. 

Adolph Engelmann served in the Mexican war in 
the Second Illinois, and during the Rebellion was 
colonel of the Forty-third Illinois, receiving the ap- 
pointment of brigadier-general as a reward. 

His predecessor in the Forty-third Illinois, Julius 
Raith, was born in Germany in 1820, came to the 
United States in 1837, served as lieutenant in the 
Second Illinois in the Mexican war, was promoted 
to captain, and, good Democrat as he had been, was 
ready to serve in the war for the Union as colonel 
of the Forty-third, — a German regiment largely or- 



I2 8 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

ganized by Gustav Korner. He fell at Shiloh, in 
command of a brigade. 

Hugo Wangelin was educated at the military- 
school of Berlin, came to the United States in 1834, 
served in the Twelfth Missouri, under Osterhaus, and 
succeeded him in command of the regiment when 
Osterhaus was promoted, making a reputation for 
distinguished gallantry for himself and his German 
soldiers, representatives of the best elements of Ger- 
man emigration in the West. Wangelin took part 
in twenty-eight engagements, and died in 1883. 

Gustav Korner was a leading spirit in all German 
organizations in the West, both in peace and war, 
and his term of office as governor was marked by 
many events of importance. 

Korner himself is a representative German, and his 
earnest efforts to advance German culture and to en- 
graft it on American patriotism deserve hearty rec- 
ognition. His services in organizing troops and in 
the executive chair of Illinois are well known. His 
name is honorably perpetuated in his book describing 
the successive and successful settlement of Germans 
throughout the United States. He has represented 
his adopted country creditably abroad, and is now 
among the veterans around whom cluster the asso- 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



I29 



ciation of all that is best, alike in German and Ameri- 
can patriotism. 

Thielemann's cavalry battalion and Hotaling's 
company of the Second Illinois Cavalry, and Stolle- 
man's and D'Osband's and Gumbart's artillery, are 
among the German organizations that received fre- 
quent and always honorable mention in the history 
of the Western campaigns. 

Gumbart's Battery, Second Illinois Light Artillery, 
was organized by Captain Adolph Schwarz, a son of 
Major-General Schwarz, of Baden. He was severely 
wounded at Shiloh. The first lieutenant was M. W. 
Mann, now a citizen of Texas. 

Friedrich Hecker is one of the names that unite 
Germany and America in a common love of liberty. 
Born in Baden in 181 1, educated at Heidelberg and 
Munich, he became a leader of the Republican party 
in his native country, and was recognized as one of 
the master-spirits of the outbreak of 1848. To its 
failure we owe the large accession of many Ger- 
mans, whose part in the Union cause has become 
one of the brightest pages of our history. His wel- 
come to his new fatherland was hearty and universal. 
He settled down to a quiet farmer's life in Illinois, 
took an active share in the work of the Republican 



!30 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

party, enlisted at the outbreak of the Rebellion in 
Sigel's regiment in St. Louis, and commanded, suc- 
cessively, the Twenty-fourth and the Eighty- second 
Illinois Volunteers, and left the field only because he 
was so severely wounded that he could no longer 
serve in the army. Like Carl Schurz, he was in- 
vited to return to Germany to take part in the or- 
ganization of its unity as an empire, but his love of 
America and American freedom made it impossible 
for him to leave his home. He was a representa- 
tive man among the Germans, active in all their 
best work in civil life, and his death, on the 22d of 
September, 1881, called forth universal expression 
of grief and sorrow. At his grave, and afterwards 
at the dedication of a monument to his memory in 
St. Louis, his old associates and his younger admirers 
bore testimony to the respect and affection in which 
Hecker's name was held. Sigel, Schurz, Korner, 
Thielemann, Rombauer, Stifel, Ledergerber, Engle- 
mann, and many who had fought together on both 
continents for Republican principles, attested the ser- 
vice done to constitutional liberty in Europe and 
America by Friedrich Hecker, and the gratitude of 
Germany and of all Germans alike in the old and 
the new fatherland. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



131 



Colonel Emile Frey, the Swiss minister to the 
United States, was an officer of Hecker's Illinois 
regiments, the Twenty-fourth and Eighty-second, — he 
volunteered, and was a lieutenant in the former and 
became a major in the latter, thus serving as a sol- 
dier in two republics, that of his native Switzerland 
and in that of his temporary home. The son of a 
distinguished Liberal leader in the Canton of Basel, 
the father was fortunate enough in his old age to 
see him a soldier in the American Republic, and 
later the diplomatic representative of that of Switzer- 
land in Washington. Colonel Frey's return to the 
United States was made the occasion of a hearty 
welcome alike from his countrymen and from his 
fellow-soldiers, and his well-earned reputation as a 
soldier in defence of the American Union was height- 
ened by his able management of the interests of the 
Swiss Confederation in the United States. The tie 
that unites the two republics was greatly strength- 
ened by this marked instance of the good service 
rendered the Union cause by its Swiss soldiers. A 
sketch of a Swiss company of sharpshooters serving 
during the war was printed at Richtersweil, Switzer- 
land, in 1865, under the title, " Drei Jahre in der 
Potomac- armee oder eine Schweitzer Schiitzen Com- 



32 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



pagnie im Nordamerikanischen Kriege" (8vo, pp. 228). 
The report made to the Swiss Confederation by its 
veteran General Dufour is one of the best accounts 
of the Federal forces at the outset, and the visit of 
that gallant soldier is still remembered by all who 
met him during his stay in this country. 

Iowa has preserved in the reports of the adjutant- 
general of the State a list of the places of nativity of 
its soldiers. Germany, of course, has its representa- 
tives in almost every organization, and in the Six- 
teenth and Twenty-sixth Iowa Volunteers there were 
companies entirely composed of Germans, rank and 
file, while the Fifth Cavalry was composed in part of 
Germans enlisted at Dubuque and Burlington for the 
Fremont Guards, by Colonel Carl Schaefer de Boern- 
stein, who fell in action in Tennessee in May, 1862, 
and was mourned as a gallant soldier. 

Matthes's Iowa battalion won distinction in Sher- 
man's army. Colonel Nicholas Perczel, of the Tenth 
Iowa, was also commended as an excellent soldier. 

From the French colonists settled at Icaria, in 
Iowa, came a number of soldiers, among them Anton 
von Gaudain, who was born in Berlin, of French- 
Huguenot stock, — the son of an army officer, and 
himself trained for an army officer. He came to the 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. l ^ 

United States at twenty-five, edited a French paper 
in New York, taught school, joined the Icarian com- 
munity in Icaria, served for three years in the Union 
army, and after the war made his home in Corning", 
Iowa, near a settlement of French Icarians, where he 
died, in 1883. He was a scholar of remarkable at- 
tainments, and was beloved by all who knew him. 

Connecticut had in its Sixth Regiment a com- 
pany of Germans from New Haven, Norwich, and 
Waterbury, commanded by Captain Klein, who be- 
came lieutenant-colonel of the regiment, and an- 
other, under Captain Biebel, from Bridgeport, Meri- 
den, and New York. In its Eleventh Regiment, 
Captain Moegling had a company of Germans from 
New Haven and Fairfield. 

Indiana, according to the report of the adjutant- 
general of that State, had in its volunteer regiments 
6456 Germans, — not far short of the 7190 credited to 
the State by Dr. Gould after the war had enabled 
him to make a fuller comparison of figures, — and a 
fair proportion of the 14,940 foreigners serving in 
and for that State, and of the 155,578 of its volun- 
teer soldiers. Among the most noteworthy of its 
representative German soldiers were General August 
Willich, and Colonel John Gerber, killed in com- 



!34 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

mand of the Twenty-fourth Indiana at Shiloh, April 
7, 1862. 

A German, Albert Lange, was one of the active 
staff of Governor Morton, and worked faithfully to 
enable that State to do its share successfully in the 
war of the Rebellion. Another German, John B. 
Lutz, led the Indiana forces in their resistance to 
Morgan's raids. The Thirty-second was a distinc- 
tive German regiment, organized in Dearborn, Floyd, 
Fort Wayne, Jefferson, and other farming districts, 
from the best classes of German-American settlers. 

Kentucky had many Germans among its fifty-six 
thousand loyal soldiers, and just as the Germans 
saved St. Louis and Missouri to the Union, so they 
helped to keep Louisville and Kentucky out of the 
Confederacy. F. Bierbower was major of the For- 
tieth Kentucky. Von Kielmansegge served in cav- 
alry commands in Missouri, Florida, and Maryland, 
where von Koerber was also a major of the First 
Cavalry. 

Minnesota wisely preserved a list of the nativities 
of its soldiers in the reports of its adjutant-general 
during the war. Company G, of the Second Regi- 
ment, and Companies D and E, of the Fifth Regi- 
ment, were both German organizations; and Henning 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



135 



von Minden was captain of Company A of the bat- 
talion of cavalry raised by him, and Emil Munch was 
captain of the First Minnesota Light Artillery. John 
C. Becht, major of the Fifth Minnesota, and R. von 
Borgersock, colonel, are among the notable German 
officers from this State. 

Maine had as lieutenant-colonel of its First Artil- 
lery Regiment and captain of its Fifth Battery, George 
F. Leppien, who had been lieutenant in a Pennsyl- 
vania battery. He was well known to Philadelphians 
from his residence and his connection with leading 
citizens of that city. Educated at a military school 
in Germany, he showed himself a thorough soldier 
in his life and in his heroic death. 

Michigan supplied four thousand eight hundred 
and seventy-two Germans out of a total of fourteen 
thousand foreigners, and in addition to seventy-six 
thousand native-born citizens, in its portion of the 
army. It is worth noting that Gould's estimate gives 
only three thousand five hundred and thirty-four. 

In the eleventh and twelfth volumes of Der 
Deutsche Pionier, Cincinnati, 1879-80, are published 
numerous contributions on the outbreak of the 
civil war in Missouri, by Friedrich Schnake, which 
give in great detail the part taken by its German 



136 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



citizens in saving that State for the Union. The 
leaders of German thought and opinion in St. Louis 
counted many who afterwards fought for their faith 
in the ranks of the Union army. Carl Danzer, 
Theodore Olshausen, Heinrich Bornstein, and L. C. 
Bernays, as editors of the Westlichen Post and Anzeiger 
des Western, did much to strengthen their German 
readers in their political views, and Friedrich Munch, 
Franz Sigel, Friederich Hecker, and Gustav Koerner 
gave their powerful help to the cause of the Union. 
Carl Schurz, Friederich Hassaurek, J. B. Stallo, and 
others were the leading Republican orators in the war 
of words that preceded the appeal to arms. Emil 
Rothe, Egly, Bruhl, and Dresel were Douglas Dem- 
ocrats, and Carl Rumelin was spokesman — almost 
without any German following — for the Breckinridge 
wing of the party, although the secession lieutenant- 
governor, Thomas C. Reynolds, was said to be really 
named Reinhardt, of Prague. A German, Arnold 
Krekel, now a judge of the United States Court, 
presided over the convention which forever abol- 
ished slavery in Missouri. Blair and Lyon, Scho- 
field and Saxton, were the active representatives of 
the National Government, but their strength came 
from the support of the loyal Germans. The Third 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. Y ^j 

Regiment Missouri Volunteers had Franz Sigel for 
its colonel, the Second, Henry Bornstein. Born in 
Hamburg in 1801, he entered the Austrian army as 
a cadet, served in the Italian campaign in 1822, 
studied medicine in Vienna, was editor, actor, and 
author in Germany, Austria, Italy, and France, and 
finally settled in St. Louis after the revolution of 
1848, where he established a successful newspaper. 
Later on he resumed his theatrical undertaking, 
and then returned to Vienna, where he corresponds 
with both English and German newspapers in Europe 
and America. The Fourth Missouri Regiment was 
commanded by Nicholas Schuttsner, a native of Co- 
blenz, a soldier in the Prussian army, and an emi- 
grant to St. Louis in 1848. One of General Lyon's 
most useful allies was John J. Witzig, born in Muhl- 
hausen in 182 1 ; educated at Chalons, at the age of 
nineteen chief engineer of the Paris Orleans Railroad, 
six years afterwards going to Italy as chief of the 
construction of the Milan Turin Railroad. In 1849 
he came with Cabet's Icarians to Nauvoo, where he 
remained until 185 1, when he came to St. Louis as 
superintendent of a locomotive works. In 1857 be- 
came superintendent of the North Missouri, in 1859 
of the Iron Mountain Railroad, remaining in its ser- 



138 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



vice until 1865. He died in 1872, member of a large 
firm of architects and engineers. Another able ally 
was Captain William Jackson, commander of the 
German artillery company. His real name was Jac- 
quin. Born in Metz in 182 1, he came to the United 
States in 1834, served three years in the Second 
United States Dragoons in the Florida and Indian 
campaigns, was discharged in 1837, enlisted in 1839 
in the Third Infantry, and in 1844 in the Seventh, 
serving under General Taylor in the Mexican war. 
Settled in St. Louis, he organized in 1852 a company 
of uhlans, which was afterwards changed to one of 
dragoons. In 1859 ne became captain of the Mis- 
souri artillery company, and when the war broke 
out brought his guns and his company of a hundred 
men — all Germans except eighteen Frenchmen and 
Americans — out of the rebel camp into the Union 
service. He was lieutenant-colonel of the Fifteenth 
Missouri and captain of the Second Missouri Artil- 
lery. One of the captains of Sigel's regiment was 
Constantin Blandowsky. Born in Prussia, on the bor- 
der of Russian Poland, in 182 1, he was educated at the 
Polytechnic School in Dresden, served in the French 
army in Algiers, took part in various unsuccessful 
Polish revolutions, then fought in Italy against Aus- 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. x ^g 

tria and in the Hungarian army, came to the United 
States in 1850, and later to St. Louis. He died on 
May 25, 1861, of wounds received in the attack on 
Camp Jackson, and was buried with military honors. 
The work done by the German soldiers of Missouri 
is told in the history of the war, but the names of 
those most prominent in their ranks will serve as 
illustrations of the fitness for the new task laid upon 
them, and of their loyalty to their new Fatherland. 
Peter Joseph Osterhaus was born in Coblenz, 
studied at the military school in Berlin, and became 
an officer of the Prussian army. In 1849 he came 
to the United States, settled in St. Louis, on the out- 
break of the civil war was chosen major of the Sec- 
ond Missouri, and after the battle of Wilson's Creek, 
colonel of the Twelfth Missouri ; under Fremont 
commanded a brigade, at Pea Ridge a division, and 
on the 9th of June, 1862, was made a brigadier- 
general. He was assigned the command of a division 
of the Thirteenth Corps at Helena, and took part in 
the capture of Arkansas Post on January 13, 1863, 
and in the subsequent siege of Vicksburg. In the 
campaigns in Tennessee and Georgia he took a dis- 
tinguished part; on the 23d July, 1864, was made 
a major-general, served under General Sherman in 



140 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



the march to the sea, and was chief of staff to Gen- 
eral Canby at the surrender of the army of General 
Kirby Smith, in May, 1865. In 1866 he was ap- 
pointed American consul in Lyons, France. 

Franz Hassendeubel was born at Gernsheim, in 
Rhenish Bavaria, in 18 17, was educated at Speier 
and Munich, came to the United States in 1842, and 
settled in St. Louis in 1844. In the Mexican war 
he was lieutenant in a volunteer battery, and later 
became captain, and served in New Mexico to the 
end. At the outbreak of the Rebellion he returned 
in all speed from Germany, became lieutenant-colonel 
of Sigel's Third Missouri, constructed the defences 
of St. Louis, was made brigadier-general, was mor- 
tally wounded at the siege of Vicksburg, and died 
July 17, 1863. 

Of the Union forces engaged at the battle of Wil- 
son's Creek, the German organizations were — Oster- 
haus's battalion, First Kansas Infantry, Colonel Deitz- 
ler; Third Missouri, Colonel Franz Sigel; Fifth Mis- 
souri, Colonel C. E. Salomon; Colonel Henry Boern- 
stein's regiment, five German regiments from St. 
Louis, Jefferson City, etc., a light battery of six guns 
under Lieutenants Schaefer and Schutzenbach, and 
two batteries of eight guns under Major Backoff. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



141 



The Third Regiment of Missouri Volunteers was 
organized in St. Louis by Franz Sigel for the three 
months' service, and took part in three battles during 
that time. The Fourth Regiment was the Black 
Yaeger Regiment, Colonel Schlittner; the Fifth was 
also a German regiment, commanded by Colonel 
Salomon. Of others there were the First Cavalry, 
Colonel Almstedt ; the Second Reserves, Colonel 
Kallmann ; the Third, Colonel Fritz ; the Fourth, 
Colonel Hundehausen and Colonel Wesseling; and 
the Fifth, Colonel Stifel. Of the three years' regi- 
ments there were the Second, Colonel Laibold ; the 
Third, Colonel Hequembourg ; the Fourth, Colonel 
Poten ; the Twelfth, Colonel (afterwards General) Os- 
terhaus and Colonel Wangelin; the Fifteenth, Colonel 
Conrad; the Seventeenth, Colonel Hassendeubel; the 
Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, and Forty-first, under Kutz- 
ner, Weydemeyer, and Von Deutsch, and the Fourth 
Cavalry, organized out of the Fremont and the Ben- 
ton Hussars, almost entirely German in its rank and 
file, although it was commanded by a gallant and 
able American, Colonel Waring. Von Helmrich, his 
lieutenant-colonel, was a type of the German soldier. 

General Sigel himself was the first rallying-point 
of the Germans, both of Missouri and the North- 



!42 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

west. Born in Baden in 1824, educated at the mili- 
tary school at Carlsruhe, in command of the repub- 
lican troops and minister of war in the revolution of 
1848, he came to the United States in 1850, lived in 
New York until 1858, when he went to St. Louis, 
where he became a teacher in the German-American 
Academy and editor of a military journal. When 
the Rebellion broke out he raised the first German 
regiment; and that old patriot, Hecker, came with 
his sons from their home in Illinois, enlisted under 
Sigel, and served with him until Hecker was made 
colonel of an Illinois regiment. From Wisconsin 
came General Salomon, who became colonel of the 
Fifth Missouri, a brigadier-general, and commanded a 
division in Fremont's army. Sigel's later services 
are part of the general history of the war of the 
Rebellion. 

In the " Geschichte des 4-jahrigen Biirgerkrieges 
in d. V. S.," von C. Sander, " Hauptman in d. k. pr. 
Artillerie," Frankfort-am-Main, Sauerlander, 1865, it 
is stated that of the forty-three thousand officers of 
the United States forces, from three to four hundred 
only had been trained in military life abroad; and 
their services were interfered with by the jealousy of 
the native citizens, by their ignorance of the Ian- 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. l ^ 

guage, and of the new conditions of a war in a coun- 
try in which they were strangers. 

These statements are mere generalizations, not 
based on any precise information, and the best reply 
to them is found in the facts and names here gathered 
together. 

Carl Schurz was born on the banks of the Rhine, 
became well known through his active share in the 
flight of Kinkel, gave up his embassy in Spain to 
become a general of volunteers, and became a mem- 
ber of Hayes's cabinet. His services as an orator 
before the war made his name familiar to the whole 
country, and his return to civil life has been marked 
by many evidences of popular esteem and affection. 
As editor of a series of books on our early German 
history by Kapp and Seidensticker, he has again taken 
the place which he has so well earned as the type of 
the German-American citizen, equally loyal to the 
country of his birth and that of his adoption and his 
home, and alike appreciated in both. 

In Nebraska, the German soldiers did good service 
in the defence of the borders from Indians, in the 
Second Cavalry, under General Sully; and in one 
engagement in Dakota, in September, 1863, the 
Indians, numbering two thousand warriors, were 



! 4 4 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

defeated, but not without a severe loss. When the 
regiment had served out its time, its veterans were 
consolidated in an independent battalion of four 
companies, and assigned to duty on the plains with 
the First Nebraska Cavalry. In the summer of 1864 
the Seventh Iowa Cavalry was assigned the defence 
of the overland post route from Fort Kearney to 
the borders, — the First Nebraska Cavalry and a com- 
pany of regular cavalry continued the line, and 
protected the country from attacks by the Indians. 
The raids became more and more frequent and 
bloody, and hundreds of homes were destroyed, and 
many settlers and their families killed or captured. 
The local government organized a force of volun- 
teers, and the War Department strengthened it by 
such aid as it could give, and thus the country was 
saved a repetition of the bloody horrors of West 
Minnesota. The First Veteran Cavalry Regiment 
was one-half German, and under Lieutenant-Colonel 
Baumer proved that it was able to cope successfully 
with the Indians. Almost in sight of sixteen thousand 
hostiles, he hanged " Black Kettle," an Indian chief, 
convicted by a court-martial of murder. William 
Baumer was born in Munster, Prussia, in 1826, was 
educated there at its High School, was by turns a 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



145 



carver and turner in wood, architect, and a railroad 
employe. He served three years in the Thirteenth 
Infantry, saw some active service, came to the United 
States in 1852, worked in Cincinnati, then settled in 
Guttenburg, Iowa, went to Dubuque, where he estab- 
lished his reputation as architect and builder, then 
went to St. Joseph, Missouri ; there he joined a Ger- 
man rifle company, at the outbreak of the Rebellion 
removed to Omaha, joined the First Nebraska, be- 
came its captain, served to the end of the war, and 
died in Omaha in 1869. His name is perpetuated by 
the Baumer Post, Grand Army of the Republic, of 
Nebraska City. 

New Jersey had no distinctive German regiments, 
although the Third New Jersey Cavalry, recruited 
at Hoboken and Jersey City, was largely composed 
of Germans; but German companies were found in 
its regiments, notably K of the First, D of the 
Second, E of the Third, A of the Fourth, and G 
and L of the Second Cavalry, and K and L of the 
Third, and Batteries B and C of the First Artillery. 

General Mindel, colonel of the Thirty-third New 
Jersey, was a very gallant and distinguished soldier. 

The Third New Jersey Cavalry (or Thirty-sixth 
New Jersey Regiment) was mustered into service, 

13 



146 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



February 10, 1864, as the First United States Hus- 
sars. Among its officers were Major Siegfried von 
Forstner, Captains Herzberg, Schafer, Knoblesdorf, 
and Stoll, Lieutenants Stulpnagel, Kramer, Siebeth, 
Bulow, Walpel. 

Joseph Karge, formerly a Prussian officer, was 
lieutenant-colonel of the First New Jersey Cavalry, 
commanded the First Brigade of Grierson's Division 
of Cavalry, and is now professor at Princeton. General 
Mindel commanded a brigade consisting of the One 
Hundred and Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania, the One 
Hundred and Thirty-fourth New York, and the 
Thirty-third New Jersey. 

Among the familiar names distinguished in the 
Rebellion is that of the Roeblings, whose services 
in war have been overshadowed by their brilliant 
success in civil life; yet their share was no small 
one in the labors and the glories of the struggle for 
the Union. 

Captain Sohm as an artillerist and General Karge 
as a cavalry officer, and Major von Forstner and 
Major Alstrom of the Third New Jersey Cavalry, 
were among those who did especial service. 

Ohio has a large proportion of Germans in its 
borders, and from them have come many soldiers. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. Y ^j 

In the Mexican war Cincinnati sent three German 
companies, Columbus, Dayton, Hamilton, each two, 
and the Second Ohio Volunteers was called the 
German Regiment. It was commanded by August 
Moor, who had served in the Florida war, and who 
served again in the Rebellion. When Fort Sumter 
was fired on, three German infantry companies and 
the Washington Dragoons were on their way to 
Washington the day the first call for troops was is- 
sued. Two German regiments were soon organized, 
and more than a third of the soldiers from Ohio were 
Germans. There were eleven German regiments: 
Ninth, Colonel Kammerling; Twenty-eighth, Colonel 
Moor; Thirty-seventh, Colonel Sieber ; Forty-seventh, 
Colonel Porschner; Fifty-eighth, Colonel Bausen- 
wein; Sixty-seventh, Colonel Burstenbinder; Seventy- 
fourth, Colonel von Schrader ; One Hundred and 
Sixth, Colonel Tafel ; One Hundred and Seventh, 
Colonel Meyer; One Hundred and Eighth, Colonel 
Limberg; One Hundred and Sixty-fifth, Colonel 
Bohlander; Third Cavalry, Colonel Zahm ; three 
batteries, Hoffman's, Dilger's, and Markgraf's. The 
German general officers from Ohio were Weitzel, 
Kautz, Moor, Ammen, von Blessing, Darr, Giese, 
Leister, Meyer, von Schrader, and Ziegler. 



Iz j_8 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

August Moor, colonel of the Twenty-eighth Ohio, 
was born in Leipsic in 1 8 14, came to this country in 
1833, was an officer of the Washington Guard of 
Philadelphia, and with its captain, Koseritz, took 
part in the Seminole war in 1836 as lieutenant of a 
dragoon regiment In the Mexican war he rose 
from captain to colonel of the Fourth Ohio, and at 
the outbreak of the Rebellion was made colonel of 
the Twenty-eighth Ohio, the second German regi- 
ment, and became a brigadier-general as a reward 
for his gallant service. Von Blessing of the Thirty- 
seventh Ohio, Degenfeld of the Twenty-sixth, Aug. 
Dotze of the Eighth Ohio Cavalry, Alex, von Schra- 
der of the Seventy-fourth Ohio, Seidel of the Third 
Ohio Cavalry, SondersdorfT of the Ninth Ohio, Tafel 
of the One Hundred and Sixth Ohio, were among 
those whose services are worth remembering. 

General August Willich was born in Gorzyn, in 
East Prussia, in 18 10, of an old noble family; 
his father had been captain in a hussar regiment. 
As a child, the son, on the death of his father, became 
a member of the family of Schleiermacher, the 
famous theologian, — a connection by marriage. At 
twelve he was sent to the cadet school at Potsdam. 
In 1828, after graduating at the military school in 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. j^g 

Berlin, he became an officer of an artillery regi- 
ment, and in 1841, captain. A Socialist Democrat, 
he learned the trade of a carpenter in his leisure 
hours, and, leaving the service, soon took a foremost 
rank in the revolution of 1848. In 1853 he came 
to the United States with the idea of organizing a 
force here to lead against Hamburg and Germany. 
He found means of livelihood in the navy yard at 
Brooklyn, then was appointed to the Coast Survey, 
and finally became editor of the German Republican 
of Cincinnati, where he was living when the Rebel- 
lion broke out. He enlisted in the First Ohio, 
became its adjutant and major of the Ninth Ohio, 
and later, colonel of the Thirty- second (First Ger- 
man) Indiana; was made a brigadier-general after 
Shiloh, when his lieutenant-colonel, Von Trebra, be- 
came colonel of the regiment. He died January 23, 
1878. 

Christopher Degenfeld was born in Germany in 
1824, and trained there as a soldier. He was major 
of the Twenty-sixth Ohio Volunteers, and afterwards 
captain of the Twelfth Ohio Cavalry. His severe 
wounds obliged him to retire, and his life was short- 
ened by his suffering, until his death, in his fifty- 
fourth year, in Sandusky. 

13* 



50 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



Captain Hermann Dettweiler was born in Baden 
in 1825, and was a soldier in its revolutionary army. 
He served in the Sixth Kentucky until his wounds 
obliged him to leave the field. He died in Louisville 
on the nth of September, 1878. 

Battery A, First West Virginia Artillery, Captain 
Furst, of Wheeling, was composed of Germans. 

Wisconsin had for its war governor Edward Salo- 
mon, born in Halberstadt, Prussia, in 1828. He 
came to Wisconsin in 1849, anc ^ was D y turns school- 
teacher, county surveyor, court clerk, lawyer, and 
governor. The Ninth Wisconsin was raised by Colo- 
nel — later General — Frederich Salomon. Born in 
Prussia in 1826, engineer, architect, and soldier in 
Germany, he too came to the United States. He 
first served in a Missouri regiment, but returned to 
organize a German regiment in Wisconsin. His com- 
panies were, among other striking titles, The She- 
boygan Tigers, The Sigel Guard, The Wisconsin 
Tigers, and The Tell Sharpshooters. When the 
colonel became a brigadier -general, the regiment 
was commanded by Colonel Jacobi and by Colonel 
Charles E. Salomon, the third and eldest brother. 

Colonel Charles E. Salomon was, like the 
governor and the general, born in Germany, in 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. I c l 

1822. He was educated as a surveyor, served as 
a volunteer in the Pioniers, and in 1843 became 
an officer of that corps. He was employed, too, in 
railroad and other engineering work. In 1849 ne 
came West; in 1850 to St. Louis, where he was 
elected county surveyor, — defeating Ulysses S. Grant 
in the contest for the popular vote, — county en- 
gineer, and held a variety of other technical offices 
in the city's service. He organized and was colonel 
of the Fifth Missouri Volunteers, and when it was 
mustered out took command of the Ninth Wiscon- 
sin, winning the brevet of brigadier-general. Re- 
turned to civil life, he was frequently employed by 
the United States, and died on February 8, 1880. 

The Twenty-sixth Wisconsin was another German 
regiment, organized at Camp Sigel, Milwaukee, and 
commanded by Colonel Jacobi and General Winkler. 
It served in the Eleventh Corps, and shared in its 
varying fortunes in the East and its brilliant suc- 
cesses under Sherman. The Twenty-seventh was 
also a German regiment under Colonel Conrad Krez, 
so were the Thirty-fourth, under Colonel Fritz An- 
neke, and the Thirty-fifth, under Colonel Henry Orff. 
Gustav von Deutsch commanded a company of cav- 
alry from Wisconsin, which became Company M of 



l t >2 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

the Fourth Missouri Cavalry. The Second Battery, 
Wisconsin Artillery, was also a German organization. 
The Fritz Anneke of the Thirty-fourth Wisconsin 
was also the author of the " Zweite Freiheitsampf," 
published at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in 1861. 

Of the German soldiers in the Rebellion, those 
mentioned in these pages may well be considered 
typical examples. These are but a small proportion 
of the great number who served with equal patriot- 
ism. It is not possible in any brief way to give 
a detailed account of all of those who were for- 
tunate enough to be distinguished in their special 
services. These pages are only a sketch of the active 
share taken in every part of the country by its 
German citizens, and perhaps some more diligent 
student may yet complete the picture by an ex- 
haustive study of the subject. Imperfect as it is, 
with all its omissions and shortcomings, it will, how- 
ever, serve to show that the Germans did their share 
in the war for the Union, alike in numbers, in 
courage, in endurance, in zeal, in all the qualities 
that make the good soldier and the good citizen. 
They may fairly point with pride to the record of 
their achievements and claim for them the reward 
of duty well done. Both those who brought with 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



153 



them the training, skill, and experience acquired in 
Germany, and those who had as part of their inher- 
itance their national qualities, deserve to be re- 
membered; this will have been successfully done 
if their names be for even a little while rescued from 
forgetfulness and oblivion. 

There were, of course, on the surface, many Ger- 
mans who rose early to a dangerous eminence, and 
some ended their career with anything but credit to 
themselves or their countrymen, but these were soon 
thinned out by the actual experiences of real war. 
As they disappeared, their places were taken by 
men of merit, and the German soldier earned the 
rank which his own achievements had gained for 
him. It was in the ranks, and as non-commissioned 
officers, that their steadiness, courage, discipline, en- 
durance, and other manly virtues were especially 
marked. Courage is not such a rare virtue, but the 
capacity to be a good soldier in the long and weary 
months of inaction, in the depression incidental to 
defeat, in the license that follows victory, in the try- 
ing hours of imprisonment and sickness, — this was 
the marked characteristic of the German soldier, 
and it shone out in those regiments and companies 
in which the mass was made up of impetuous and 



JIJ4 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

undisciplined Americans, unaccustomed to obedience 
and self-sacrifice. Here and there a German was 
found who steadied the others by his example, some- 
times without a word, occasionally by a little en- 
couragement, always by his manly and soldierly 
qualities. The literature of the war is largely made 
up of the heroic achievements of those who gained 
promotion and distinction, but there is also found in 
regimental histories and in the dry annals of State 
records, the occasional mention of some special gal- 
lantry of the enlisted man. The story of his part of 
the hardships and the successes of the war remains 
to be told, — cannot, perhaps, in view of the vast 
number of soldiers, ever be fully told, — but wher- 
ever the German soldier served, there he made his 
mark by characteristic virtues, the distinguishing 
traits of his nationality, in both new and old country. 
The Hon. Andrew D. White, lately President of 
Cornell University, and formerly United States Min- 
ister to Germany, gave an admirable summary of 
the intellectual debt of the United States to Ger- 
many in his address, delivered October 4, 1884, at 
the centennial celebration of the German Society of 
New York. The title is the key to the note he 
strikes. It is entitled " Some Practical Influences 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. X cc 

of German Thought upon the United States," and it 
is full of suggestive ideas and profound thoughts. 
He refers to the Revolution, when "the organizing 
power of Steuben, the devotion of Kalb, and the 
rude courage of Herckheimer were precious in es- 
tablishing the liberties of the country;" to the recog- 
nition of the infant Republic by Frederic the Great, 
first of all European rulers; and to the "earnestness 
of German-American thinkers, so long as the strug- 
gle was carried on with the pen, and the bravery of 
German-American soldiers when it was carried on 
by the sword." He pays fitting tribute to the words 
and deeds of sympathy that came from Germany 
alone in the fearful darkness and distress of the civil 
war, when " German scholars and thinkers, men like 
Theodore Mommsen and his compeers, proclaimed 
their detestation of slavery and their hope for the 
American Union." In another place he shows the 
reflex effect of the great work done by a German- 
American as orator, soldier, and statesman, when, 
speaking of Carl Schurz as " first of all the recent 
American thinkers," he tells us that Bismarck said 
to him, "As a German I am proud of the success 
of Carl Schurz." He closes in an earnest hope that 
" the healthful elements of German thought will aid 



i 5 6 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



powerfully in evolving a future for this land purer 
in its politics, nobler in its conception of life, more 
beautiful in the bloom of art, more precious in the 
fruitage of character." What the Germans have al- 
ready done in and for this country is the best as- 
surance that this fervent prayer will be granted. 
To show their share as soldiers in the wars of the 
United States, is at least a justification of the right 
and duty cast upon them to see that so far as in 
them lies, neither from within nor without shall 
any injury befall the Republic. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. T $y 



GERMAN OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY. 

General Officers. 
DeKalb, John, maj.-gen., 1777. 
Steuben, F. W. A., maj.-gen., 1778. 
De Woedtke, Frederick William, brig.-gen., 1776. 
Muhlenberg, T. P. G., brig.-gen., 1777. 
Weedon, George, brig.-gen., 1777. 

Weisenfels, F., lieut.-col. com. 4th N. Y., 1779. 
Ziegler, D., capt. istPenna., 1778. 

German Battalion. 
Weltener, Ludwick, lieut.-col., 1776. 
Burchart, D., maj., 1777. 
Bunner, J., capt., 1776. 
Boyer, P., capt., 1777. 
Boetzel, Charles, capt., 1777. 
Rice, William, capt., 1778. 
Hubley, Bernard, capt., 1778. 
Myers, Chr., capt., 1778. 
Boyer, Mich., capt., 1778. 
Schrauder, Ph., capt., lieut., 1778. 
Weidman, John, lieut., 1777. 
Sugart, Martin, lieut., 1777. 
Gremeth, Jacob, lieut., 1778. 
Cramer, Jacob, lieut., 1778. 
Swartz, Godfrey, lieut., 1778. 
Young, Marcus, lieut., 1778. 
Morgan, David, lieut., 1778. 

14 



158 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



Weidman, John, ens., 1777. 
Shrupp, Henry, ens., 1777. 
Desenderfer, David, ens., 1778. 
Spech, Henry, ens., 1778. 
Raboldt, Jacob, ens., 1778. 
Glickner, Ch., ens., 1778. 
Prue, William, ens., 1778. 
Hehn, Henry, ens., 1779. 

Independent Corps. 

Schott, John Paul, capt, 1776*. 
Selim, Anthony, capt., 1776. 

Invalid Regiment. 

Nicola, Lewis, col., 1777. 
Woelpper, David, capt., 1778. 

Marechausee Light Dragoons. 

Van Heer, Barthol., capt., 1778. 
Manaeke, Christ., lieut., 1778. 
Maitinger, Jac, lieut., 1778. 
Struebing, Phil., lieut., 1778. 

Armand's Legion, Cavalry. 

Markle, Chas., capt., 1778. 
Schaffner, George, capt., 1778. 
Seibert, Henry, lieut., 1778. 
Schwartz, Godfried, lieut., 1778. 
Segern, Fred., lieut., 1778. 
Riedel, Henry, ens., 1778. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. jcq 

Regular Army. 
Bauman, Sebastian, maj.-com't. Art., 1778. 
Kalteisen, Michael, capt. Art., 1794. 
Muhlenburg, Henry, lieut. Art., 1794. 
Ziegler, David, capt. 1st Inf., 1784. 
Strubing, Philip (Van Heer's Corps), capt., bv't., 1784. 

The following officers of the regular army were 
Germans : 

Adam, Emil, Alton Jagers, 1861; capt. 9th 111., 1861 ; major 114th 

111., 1865; capt. 5th U. S. Cav., 1870. 
Adolphus, Philip, Prussia; surgeon, 1861-65; Md. 
Axt, Godfrey H. T., Germany; surgeon 20th N. Y. Vols.; U. S. A., 

1867. 
Balder, Christian, enl. U. S. A. May 12, 1857; 1st lieut. 25th Inf., 

1862. 
Bendire, Charles, enl. U. S. A., 1854; capt. 1st Cav., 1873; retired 

1886. 
Bentzoni, Charles, enl. U. S. A., 1857; col. 56th U. S. Col. Troops, 

1865; capt. 25th Inf., 1866. 
Clous, John W., enl. U. S. A , 1857; capt. 24th Inf., 1867. 
Conrad, Joseph, capt. 3d Mo., 1861 ; col. 15th Mo., 1862; capt. nth 

Inf., 1869; retired as colonel, 1882. 
Crone, L. E., 22d Mass., 1861 ; capt. 42d Inf., 1866; retired 1870. 
Decker, Th., 4th Art., 1875 ; 2d lieut. 24th Inf., 1879. 
De Gress, Jacob C, capt. 6th Mo. Cav. ; capt. 9th U. S. Cav., 1867; 

retired 1870. 
Ebstein, F. H. E., enl. U. S. A., 1864; capt. 21st Inf., 1885. 
Eggenmeyer, A., 1st lieut. 12th Inf.; killed June 1, 1864. 



!6o THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

Falck, William, enl. 1858; capt. 2d Inf., 1866; retired 1883. 

Freudenberg, C. G., capt. 52d N. Y., 1861 ; capt. 14th Inf., 1869; re- 
tired as lieut.-col., 1877. 

Fuger, F., enl. 4th Art., 1856 ; 1st lieut., 1865. 

Gaebel, F., 1st lieut. 45th Inf., 1866. 

Gardener, Corn., 2d lieut. 19th Inf., 1879. 

Gerlach, William, enl. 1856; 1st lieut. 3d Inf., 1879. 

Goldman, H. J., 2d lieut. 5th Cav., 1877. 
V Green, John, enl. July 1, 1846; maj. 1st Cav., 1868; lieut.-col. 2d 
Cav., 1885. 

Grossman, F. E., 2d lieut. 7th Inf., 1863; capt. 17th Inf., 1871. 

Gunther, S., enl. 1st Cav., 1855; capt. 4th Cav., 1870; retired 1884. 

Heger, A., surgeon U. S. A., 1856-67. 

von Hermann, C. J., maj. A. A. D. C; capt. 4th Inf., 1866. 

Hesselberger, G. A., 2d lieut., 1866; 1st lieut. 3d Inf., 1871. 

Hoelcke, William, German army, 1849-51 ; British Legion in Cri- 
mea; 1st lieut. Mo. Vols.; 1st lieut. 39th U. S., 1866-70. 

Hoffman, Ernest F., Royal Engineers, Berlin ; lieut. Prussian army, 
1844-56; capt. and maj. Italian army; 2d lieut. 35th Inf., 1867. 

Hoppy, E., enl. 2d Art., 1854; 1st lieut. 9th Inf., 1871; retired. 

Ilges, Guido, 14th Inf., 1861 ; lieut.-col. 9th Inf., 1871. 

Johnson, Lewis, 10th Ind., 1861 ; bvt. brig.-gen. U. S. Vols., 1865; 
capt. 24th Inf., 1869. 

Kautz, A. V., 1st Ohio, 1846; 2d lieut. 4th Inf., 1852; capt. 6th Cav., 
1861 ; col. 2d Ohio Cav., 1862; brig.-gen. Vols., 1864; bvt. maj.- 
gen., 1865; col. 8th Inf., 1874. 

Keller, J. W., 6th Mass., 1861 ; 1st lieut. 42d Inf., 1866; capt. re- 
tired list, 1870. 

Keye, F., 2d lieut. 10th Inf., 1869. 

Koerper, E. A., surgeon 75th Pa., U. S. A., 1867. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. ifa 

Kopp, William, 1st lieut. Washington Territory Vols., 1862; 1st lieut. 

13th Inf., 1867. 
Kramer, A., 2d Dragoons, 1857; capt. 15th Penna. Cav., 1862; capt. 

6th Cav., 1874. 
Kroutinger, A. W., enl. 2d Inf., 1848; capt. 2d Inf., 1864; retired 1879. 
Liedtke, F. W., nth Penna., 1861 ; 2d lieut. 43d Inf., 1866; 1st Inf., 

1871. 
Lockwood, T. A., 2d lieut. 17th Inf., 1880. 
von Luettwitz, A. H., 54th N. Y., 1862; 1st lieut. 3d Cav., 1874; 

retired 1879. 
Luhn, G. L., enl. 1853; capt. 4th Inf., 1875. 
Magnitzky, G., 20th Mass., 1861 ; capt., 1864; 2d lieut. 14th Inf., 

1870; retired 1871. 
Mahnken, John H., 1st N. Y. Cav.; 1st lieut. 8th U. S. Cav., 1877. 
Meinhold, Charles, 3d Cav., 1862; capt. 3d Cav., 1866; died 1877. 
Merkle, Charles F., 1st lieut. 4th Art, 1862. 
Meyer, Martin, capt. 12th Inf., 1861. 

Meyers, Edward, 2d lieut. 1st Cav., 1862; 7th Cav., 1866. 
Michaelis, O. E., 23d N. Y. ; capt. Ordnance, 1874. 
von Michalowsky, T. B., 2d lieut. 1st Art., 1861 ; 1st lieut., 1863. 
Motz, John, 1st lieut. nth Inf., 1847. 
Orlemann, L. H., 103d, and capt. 119th N. Y. ; 1st lieut. 10th Cav., 

1867; retired 1879. 
Patzki, J. H., surgeon 15th N. Y. ; capt. asst. surg. U. S. A., 1869. 
Paulus, Jacob, 5th and 50th Penna.; 2d lieut. 18th U. S. Inf.; capt. 

25th Inf., 1873. 
Phisterer, F., 2d lieut. 18th Inf., 1861; capt. 36th Inf. and 7th Inf., 

1869. 
Rawolle, W. C, 2d lieut. 2d N. Y. Art., 1861 ; 2d lieut. 2d Cav., 

1868; adjt, 1878; capt., 1880. 
14* 



x 62 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

Reichmann, Carl, enl. 1881 ; 2d lieut. 24th Inf., 1884. 

Renaldo, H. O., 2d lieut. 9th Inf., 1861 ; 1st lieut., 1863. 

Rendlebrock, J., enl. 1851 ; 2d lieut. 4th Cav., 1862; capt., 1867; re- 
tired 1879. 

Ritzius, H. P., 5th N. Y., 1861; maj. 52d N. Y., 1864; 1st lieut. 
25th Inf., 1875. 

Roemer, Paul, enl. 5th Art., 1858; 1st lieut., 1866. 

Ruhlen, George, 1st lieut. 17th Inf., 1876. 

Quentin, J. E., capt. 103d N. Y.; 1st lieut. 14th Inf., 1867. 

Sachs, H., 2d lieut. 3d Cav., 1861. 

Schaurte, F. W., 2d lieut. 2d Cav., 1862; capt., 1866. 

von Schirach, F. C, 54th N. Y., 1861 ; 1st lieut. 43d Inf., 1866; re- 
tired 1870. 

von Schrader, Alexander, 2d lieut. nth Inf., 1866; maj. 39th Inf., 
1866; died 1867. 

Schreyer, George, 2d lieut. 6th Cav., 1866. 

Schultze, Thilo, 12th Mo., 1865; 2d lieut. 14th Inf., 1865. 

Schwann, Theo., enl. 1857; capt. nth Inf., 1866. 

Sellmer, Charles, enl. 1854; capt. nth Me., 1862; 1st lieut. 3d Art., 

1877. 
Simon, Charles, 2d lieut. 5th Art., 1862; 1st lieut, 1866. 
Smith, John E., col. 45th 111.; col. 27th Inf., 1866; retired 1881. 
Smith, Thos., enl. 1867; 1st lieut. 15th Inf., 1877. 
Steinmetz, William R., capt. and asst. surg., 1 87 1. 
Stelyes, Claus, 2d lieut. 4th Art., 1863. 
Sternberg, Sig., 2d lieut. 27th Inf. ; killed 1867. 
Stiebner, Eugene ; army, 1st Art. Fort Sumter, 1861 ; 1st New York 

Art., 1862; 3d Penna., 1863; 1 6th N. Y., 1864; 2d lieut. 15th 

Inf., 1865; ist lieut. 33d Inf. 
Stommel, Julius, 41st N. Y. ; 2d lieut. 43d Inf., 1866; 1st lieut., 1869. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



163 



v^Syberg, Arnold, capt. nth Inf., 1847. 

Thibaut, F. W., 2d lieut. 7th N. Y., 1861 ; 1st lieut. 6th Inf., 1868. 

Thies, F., enl. 1866; 2d lieut. 3d Inf., 1873. 

Urban, Gustavus, army; 2d lieut. 5th Cav. ; capt., 1866. 

Valois, Gustavus, capt. 4th Md., 1862; capt. 9th Cav., 1884. 

Veitenheimer, Carl, 74th Penna. ; 2d lieut. 4th Inf.; 1st lieut., 1866. 

Vermann, Otto, 2d lieut. 13th Inf., 1866. 

Wagner, Henry, enl. 1856; 2d lieut. nth Inf., 1863; capt. 1st Cav., 

1869. 
Walbach, John de B., 1st lieut. Cav., 1799; col. 4th Art., 1 842; died, 

1857. 
Warrens, C. N., 1st lieut. 4th Mo., 1861; capt. 14th Inf., 1883. 
Wedemeyer, W. G., enl. 1861 ; capt. 16th Inf., 1865. 
Wenckebach, E. F., 2d lieut. 13th Inf., 186$; capt 22d Inf., 1867. 
Wesendorff, Max, 1st lieut. Washington Territory Vols., 1862 ; 2d 

lieut. 24th Inf., 1867; capt. 1st Cav., 1880. 
Wilhelmi, Louis, 2d lieut. 1st Inf., 1865; 1st lieut., 1880. 

The following, from a " List of Field Officers ot 
U. S. Volunteers," are Germans : 

Abell, Caspar K., maj. 72d N. Y. 

Abell, Charles C, maj. 6th N. Y. and 10th N. Y. Art. 

Almstedt, Henry, col. 1st Mo. ; 2d Mo. Lt. Art. 

Alstrom, John V., maj. 3d N. J. Cav. 

Ammen, Jacob, col. 12th Ohio. 

von Amsberg, George, col. 45th N. Y. 

Anselm, Albert, lieut. -col. 3d Mo. 

Arn, F., maj. 31st Ind. 

Balling, O. H. P., maj. 145th N. Y. 



6 4 



THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 



Banghof, C, maj. 1st Mo. Cav. 

von Baumbach, C, maj. 24th Wis. 

Bausenwein, V., col. 58th Ohio. 

Becht, John C, maj. 5th Minn. 

Beck, Arnold, lieut.-col. 2d Mo. 

Beck, Christian, lieut.-col. 9th Ind. Cav. 

Beck, Fred, maj. 108th Ohio. 

Beck, William, maj. 27th Mo. 

Becker, Adolph, lieut.-col. 46th N. Y. 

Becker, Gottfried, lieut.-col. 28th Ohio. 

Becker, Philip, lieut.-col. 5th Penna. Cav. 

Behlendorff, F., maj. 13th 111. 

Bendix, John E., col. 7th N. Y. 

Bierbower, F., maj. 40th Ky. 

Blenker, L., col. 8th N. Y. 

von Blessing, L., lieut.-col. 37th Ohio. 

von Boernstein, Shaeffer, col. 5th Iowa Cav. 

von Borgersock, R., col. 5th Minn. 

Botchfur, Hugo, maj. 1st Ark. Cav. 

Bramlich, Charles, maj. 2d Ark. Inf. 

Brutsche, John D., lieut.-col. 8th Mo. Cav. 

Burger, Louis, col. 5th N. Y. 

Degenfeld, Christian, col. 26th Ohio. 

Deitzler, George W., col. 1st Kansas. 

Diechman, Julius, maj. 15th N. Y. Heavy Art. 

Dotze, Aug., lieut.-col. 8th Ohio Cav. 

Duysing, Emil, lieut.-col. 41st N. Y. 

von Egloffstein, F. W., col. 103d N. Y. 

Ehrler, Francis, lieut.-col. 2d Mo. 

von Einsidel, D., lieut.-col. 41st N. Y. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Erdelmeyer, F., lieut.-col. 32d Ind. 

Ernenwein, C, lieut.-col. 2ist Penna. 

Faltz, Ernst M., lieut.-col. 8th Md. 

von Forstner, S., maj. 3d N. J. Cav. 

Gaebel, F. A. H., maj. 7th N. Y. 

Gellman, F., lieut.-col. 58th N. Y. 

von Gerber, G., lieut.-col. 6th Ind. 

Glapcke, Herman, maj. 22d Conn. 

Goelzer, Aug., lieut.-col. 60th Ind. 

Gruesel, Nich., col. 7th 111. 

von Hammerstein, H., col. 78th N. Y. 

Happel, Christian, lieut.-col. 10th Mo. 

von Hartung, Adolph, col. 74th Penna. 

Hassendeubel, F., col. 3d Mo. 

Heinrichs, Gust., lieut.-col. 4th Mo. Cav. 

Heintz, R., maj. 28th Ohio. 

Heintzleman, M. T., lieut.-col. I72d Penna. 

von Helmrich, G., lieut.-col. 5th Mo. Cav. 

Hequembourg, A. G., lieut.-col. 40th Mo. 

Hequembourg, W. A., maj. 3d Mo. 

Hundhausen, Julius, lieut.-col. 4th Mo. 

Hundhausen, Robert, col. 4th Mo. 

Jacobsen, Aug., lieut.-col. 27th Mo. 

Jaensch, F., maj. 31st Mo. 

Jussen, Edm., lieut.-col. 23d Wis. 

Kaercher, Jac, lieut.-col. 12th Mo. 

Kahler, F. M., maj. 62d Ohio. 

Kammerling, Gus., col. 9th Ohio. 

von Kielmansegge, E., col. 4th Mo. Cav.; 1st Florida Cav. 

Knobellsdorff, Charles, col. 44th 111. 



165 



x 66 THE GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE 

Knoderer, Charles, col. 167th Penna. 

von Koerber, V. E., maj. 1st Md. Cav. 

Koltes, John A., col. 73d Penna. 

Kozlay, E. A., col. 54th N. Y. 

Krekel, Arnold, maj. Mo. Batt'y. 

Kreutzer, William, lieut.-col. 98th N. Y. 

Krez, Cornel., col. 27th Wis. 

Kummell, A. PL, lieut.-col. 13th Wis. 

von Kusserow, C, lieut.-col. 2d U. S. Vet. Vols. 

Laiboldt, Bernard, col. 2d Mo. 

Landgraeber, Clemens, maj. 2d Mo. Lt. Art. 

Ledergerber, F. T., maj. 12th Mo. 

Leppien, George F., lieut.-col. 1st Me. Art. 

Mahler, F., col. 75th Penna. 

von Matzdorff, A., lieut.-col. 75th Penna. 

Mehler, Adolph, lieut.-col. 98th Penna. 

Metternich, G., lieut.-col. 46th N. Y. 

Minden, von Henning, maj. Hatch's Batt'n. Minn. Cav. 

von Mitzel, Alex., lieut.-col. 74th Penna. 

Moor, Aug., col. 28th Ohio. 

Mueller, Charles, lieut.-col. 107th Ohio. 

Osterhaus, P. J., col. 12th Mo. 

Perczel, N., col. 10th Iowa. 

Porchner, F., col. 47th Ohio. 

Possegger, F., maj. 1st N. Y. Cav. 

Reichard, F. H., maj. 188th Penna. 

Reichard, George N., lieut.-col. 143d Penna. 

Rolshausen, F., maj. 82d 111. 

Rosa, Rudolph, col. 46th N. Y. 

Rosengarten, Adolph G., maj. 15th Penna. (Anderson) Cav. 



WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. tfy 

Salm-Salm, Prince, col. 8th N. Y. 

von Schach, G. W., col. 7th N. Y. 

Schadt, Otto, lieut.-col. 12th Mo. 

Schaeffer, F., col. 2d Mo. 

von Schickfus, F., lieut.-col. 1st N. Y. Cav. 

von Schilling, F., maj. 3d Penna. Art. 

Schimmelfennig, A., col. 74th Penna. 

Schirmer, L., col. 15th N. Y. 

Schlittner, Nich., col. 4th Mo. 

von Schluembach, Alex., maj. 29th N. Y. 

Schnepf, E., lieut.-col. 20th N. Y. 

Schoeffel, F. A., lieut.-col. 13th N. Y. 

von Schrader, Alex., lieut.-col. 74th Ohio. 

Schumacher, F., maj. 21st Wis. 

Segebarth, H., maj. 3d Penna. Art. 

Seidel, C. B., col. 3d Ohio Cav. 

Seidel, G. A., maj. 7th N. Y. 

Seidlitz, Hugo, maj. 27th Penna. 

Soest, Clemens, col. 29th N. Y. 

Sondersdorff, C, lieut.-col. 9th Ohio. 

Stahel, Julius, col. 8th N. Y. 

von Steinhausen, A., lieut.-col. 68th N. Y. 

von Steinwehr, A., col. 29th N. Y. 

Tafel, Gust., lieut.-col. 106th Ohio. 

Tassin, A. G., col. 35th Ind. 

Thielemann, Christian, col. 16th 111. Cav. 

Thielemann, Milo, maj. 16th 111. Cav. 

Thoman, Max, lieut.-col. 59th N. Y. 

Tiedemann, D. F., lieut.-col. Iioth U. S. Colored. 

von Trebra, H., col. 32d Ind. 



j58 THE GERMAN SOLDIER. 

von Vegesach, E., col. 20th N. Y. 
Veitenheimer, Carl, lieut.-col. 74th Penna. 
Wagner, Louis, col. 88th Penna. 
Wangelin, Hugo, col. 12th Mo. 
Weber, Max, col. 20th N. Y. 
von Wedell, Carl, maj. 68th N. Y. 
Willich, A., col. 32d Ind. 
Zakrzenski, H., lieut.-col. 2d Mo. 



INDEX. 



Adenbousch, 2d Va., 85. 
Almstedt, 1st Mo. Cav., 141. 
Alstrom, 3d N. J., 146. 
Amsberg, von, 45th N. Y., 115. 
Ammen, 24th O., 62. 
Annecke, 23d, 34th Wis., 151. 
Anspach, 38. 
Armlinsen, von, N. O. Turner 

Guards, 85. 
Arndt, 1st N. Y. Art., 126. 
Asboth, 93. 

Bachman, W. K., S. C, 8^. 
Bachman's Battery, Washington 

Art., C. S. A., 85. 
Bahncke, N. O. Turner Guards, 

85. 
Ballier, 98th Pa., 106. 
Baltzel, C, 23. 

Bauman, Col., U. S. A., 25, 38. 
Baumer, 1st Neb., 145. 



Bausenwein, 58th Ohio, 147. 
Becht, J. C., 5th Minn., 135. 
Becker, 50. 

Bendix, Col., 7th N. Y., 114. 
Biebel, 6th Conn., 133. 
Bierbower, 40th Ky., 134. 
Bierer, E., 171st Pa., 107. 
Blandowsky, 3d Mo., 138. 
Blankenburg, H., 77. 
Blenker, 93, 123. 
Blessing, von, L., 37th Ohio, 148. 
Boernstein, 2d Mo., 137. 
Bohlander, 115th Ohio, 147. 
Bohlen, H., 75th Pa., no. 
Boone, Daniel, 35. 
Borcke, von, Heros, C. S. A., 76. 
Borgersock, 135. 
Bouquet, 12. 

Brickel, 1st N. Y. Lt. Art., 125. 
Brueckner, 73d Pa., in. 
Buggenhagen,von, 7th N.Y.,121. 
; 169 



170 



INDEX. 



Bunner, R., 23d Continental, 50. 
Burckhart, D., 23. 
Burger, 5th N. Y. S. M., 115. 
Burger, N. 0. Steuben Guards, 85. 
Burstenbinder, 67th Ohio, 147. 
Bushbeck, A., 27th Pa., 109. 

Closen, von, 42. 
Colorado, 126. 
Connecticut, 133. 
Conrad, A., 77, 44. 
Cordes, T„ S. C, 81. 
Cornehlsen, N. C, 79. 
Cramer, J., 23. 
C. S. A., 85. 
Custer, Gen. George, 68. 

Degenfeld, C, 26th Ohio, 149. 
Demler, 38. 

Dettweiler, H., 6th Ky., 150. 
Deutsch, von, 4th Mo. Cav., 152. 
Dieterich, 1st N.Y. Lt. Art., 125. 
Dilger, Ohio, 147. 
Doster, 4th Pa. Cav., 108. 
Dotze, 8th Ohio Cav., 148. 
Dreer, F. J., 25. 

Eickhoff, 78. 
Elking, von, 19. 
Engelmann, 43d 111., 127. 



Ermentrout, Daniel, 10. 
Esebeck, 41. 
Estvan, 77. 
Ewald, 42. 

Farmer, 50. 

Fersen, 42. 

Forstner, von, 3d N. J. Cav., 146. 

Frank, 52d N. Y., 115. 

Freilich, 38. 

Freudenberg, 5 2d N. Y., 117. 

Frey, 24th 111., 131. 

Fry, Gen. J. B., 88. 

Furman, 38. 

Furst, 1st W. Va. Art., 150. 

Gardiner, J. de B. W., U. S. A., 

60. 
Gau, 42. 

Gaudain, von, A., 132. 
Georgia, 85. 

Gerber, J., 24th Ind., 134. 
Gilsa, von, 41st N. Y., 115, 124. 
Glichner, Ch., 23. 
Gould, Dr. B. A., 89. 
Greble, Lieut. J. T., 2d U. S. Art., 

69. 
Greble, Lieut. E. S., 2d U. S. Art., 

7i- 
Green, G. W., 19. 



INDEX. 



171 



Gremeth, J., 23. 
Gries, 104th Pa., 105. 
Griesinger, T., 87. 
Gumbart, 111. Batt., 129. 



Haake, 41. 

Haake, von, Count, 52c! N. Y., 

122. 
Haas, de, J. P., 41, 50. 
Haas, de, W., 43. 
Hagner, Gen., 62. 
Hambright, Gen. H. A., 73. 
Harms, Capt. H., S. C., 81. 
Hartmann, J. A., 48. 
Hartranft, Gen. J. F., 51st Pa., 

107. 
Hassendeubel, Col., 17th Mo., 
140. 

Haupt, Gen. H., 62. 

Haussegger, 39. 

Hecker, F., 82d 111., 129. 

Heer, van B., 40. 

Hehn, 23. 

Heileman, J. F., 61. 

Heine, W., 103d N. Y.,71. 

Heintzelman, Gen. S. P., 62. 

Helmrich,von, 4th Mo. Cav., 141 

Hendricks, 1st N. Y. Cav., 122. 

Hendricks, W., 24. 



Henry, 24. 

Herkimer, Gen., 48. 

Hiester, 47, 50. 

Hofmann, Gen. J. W., 56th Pa., 

109. 
Hoffman, Ohio Batt., 147. 
Howelman, 46. 
Hubley, B , 23. 

Illinois, 99, 127. 
Indiana, 133. 
Iowa, 132. 

Jackson, William, 3d Mo., 138. 
Jacobi, 9th Wis., 151. 
Jaulmann, 38. 
Jeffereys, 12. 
Jenkins, H. M., 40. 

Kalb de, Gen., 19, 25. 
Kalteisen, M., S. C. Cont'l Art., 

32, 33> 35- 
Kapff, 7th N. Y., 114. 
Kapp, F., 15. 

Karge,Gen.J., 1st N.J. Cav., 146. 
Kautz, A. V., 8th U. S. Inf., 67. 
Kentucky, 134. 
Kielmansegge, von, 4th Mo. Cav., 

134. 



172 



INDEX. 



Klein, 6th Conn., 133. 
Kleisser, 30th N. Y., 126. 
Klingelhoffer, C. S. A., Ark., 55. 
Kloch, Col. J., N. Y. Cont'l Reg., 

48. 
Knierim, 1st N. Y. Art., 125. 
Knobelsdorff, von, 44th 111., 127. 
Knoderer, 168th Pa., 106. 
Koerber, von, 1st Mo., 134. 
Kohler, 98th Pa., 105. 
Koltes, 73d Pa., ill. 
Korner, G., 35, 128. 
Kramer, 3d N. J. Cav., 146. 
Krez, Col., 27th Wis., 151. 
Kusserow, von, 32d N. Y. Batt., 

125. 

Lange, A., Inda., 134. 
Langenheim, William, 72. 
Lederer, John, 79. 
Lehmann, 103d Pa., 107. 
Leppien, 1st Me. Art., 121. 
Lieber, F., 63. 
Limberg, 108th Ohio, 147. 
Louisiana, 84. 
Lowell, E. J., 19. 
Loyal Legion, 117. 
Luther, 62. 
Lutterloh, 35, 37. 
Lutz, J. B., 134. 



Maine, 135. 

Mangold, 78. 

Markgraf, Ohio Art., 147. 

Marschall, 53. 

Matthes, la., 132. 

Melchers, C. S. A., 80. 

Mentges, 50. 

Meyer, 107th Ohio, 147. 

Michigan, 135. 

Mindel, G., 33d N. J., 145. 

Minden, von, Henning, Minn. 

Cav., 134. 
Minnesota, 134. 
Missouri, 95, 136. 
Moegling, nth Conn., 133. 
Moltke, von, 1st N. Y. Cav., 

122. 
Moor, Aug., 28th Ohio, 147, 148. 
Mordecai, Maj., U. S. A., 67. 
Mordecai, Col., U. S. A., 68. 
Morgan, D., 23. 
Muehleck, 73d Pa., in. 
Muhlenberg, 16, 34, 51, 62. 

Nast, Thomas, 119. 

Nauman, Col. George, U. S. A., 

61. 
Nebraska, 143. 
Neslett, 38. 
New Jersey, 145. 



INDEX. 



173 



New York, 48, 98, 114. 
Nohrden, C. S. A., 81. 
North Carolina, 79. 

Ohio, 99, 147. 
Orff, H., 35th Wis., 151. 
Osband, 111. Art., 129. 
Osterhaus, 12th Mo., 139. 
Ottendorff, 46. 

Parkman, F., 13. 

Passegger, 1st N. Y. Cav., 122. 

Pennsylvania, 8, 10, 13, 100. 

Pennypacker, Gen., 97th Pa., 103. 

Perczel, A., 10th Iowa, 132. 

Pionier, 34, 135, 

Poe, 44. 

Porschner, 47th Ohio, 147. 

Post, C. F., 14. 

Provost, 12. 

Prux, 23. 

Quitman, Gen. J. A., 53. 

Raboldt, 23. 
Radowitz, von, 121. 
Raith, Julius, 43d 111., 127. 
Ratterman, 41. 
Riedesel, 19, 49. 
Roland, 62. 



Rosengarten, A. G., 15th Pa. 

Cav., 3. 
Runge, N. C, 79. 
Riistow, 78. 

Salm-Salm, Princess, 120. 
Salm-Salm, 8th N. Y., 121. 
Salomon, F., 9th Wis. ; C. E., 5th 

Mo.; E. S., 82d 111., 150, 151. 
Sanitary Commission, 89. 
Sauer, 20. 
Schaefer, de Boernstein, 5th la. 

Cav., 132. 
Schach, von, 7th N. Y., 114. 
Schall, 51st Pa., 105. 
Scheibert, 76. 
Scheppert, ^3 
Scherer, 121st Pa., 102. 
Schickfuss, von, 1st N. Y. Cav., 

121. 
Schlattler, 13. 
Schleicher, Gust., 72, 86. 
Schnake, 135. 
Schneider, 10. 
Schott, J. P., 40. 
Schott, 73d Pa., in. 
Schott, 24. 

Schirmer, N. Y. Batt, 121. 
Schroder, von, 74th Ohio, 39th 

U. S. A., 73. 



174 



INDEX. 



Schulz, S. C. Art., 86. 
Schurz, istN. Y. Cav., 47, 121. 
Schiitts, 4th Mo. Vols., 137. 
Schwarz, 2d 111. Art., 129. 
Schwarzwalder, 5th N. Y. S. M. 

"5- 

Schwenke, 121. 

Seidensticker, 39, 49, 

Selim. 24. 

Shiras, 62. 

Shriver, 62. 

Shrupp, 23. 

Siebath, 3d N. J. Cav., 146. 

Sieber, 37th Ohio, 147. 

Sigel, F., 3d Mo., 142. 

Sigwald, C. B., S. C, 81. 

South Carolina, 79. 

Stedingk, 42. 

Steinwehr von, 29th N. Y., 123. 

Steuben, Gen., 19, 20, 31, 37. 

Steuben, Baron, von, 5 2d N. Y. 

116. 
Stolleman, 111. Art., 129. 
Sugart, 23. 
Swartz, 23. 
Sytez, George, 38. 

Tafel, 106th Ohio, 147. 
Texas, 84. 
Thayer, 13. 



Thielemann, 111. Cav., 129. 
Ticbout, 38. 

Tiedeman, 75th Pa., 113. 
Trebra, von, 32d Ind., 121. 

Vezin, 5th Pa., 15th Pa., 4th Mo. 
in. 

Virginia, 84. 

Voegelin, 1st N. Y. Art., 125. 

Vollers, N. C, 79. 

Wagener, J. A., S. C. Vols., 72, 

81. 
Wagner, Gen. L , 88th Pa., 113. 
Walbach, 4th U. S. Art., 55. 
Wangelin, H., 12th Mo., 128. 
Waring, 4th Mo. Cav., 94, 141. 
Weber, M., 20th N. Y., 115. 
Weedon, Gen., 45. 
Weidman, 23. 
Weiser, Conrad, 10, 15. 
Weissenfels, 36, 38. 
Weitzel, Gen. G., 72. 
Weltner, 23. 
Wetzel, M., 38. 
Wetzel, L., 43. 
White, A. D., 154 
Willich, Gen., 1st German, Ohio; 

1st German, Ind. ; 32d Ind., 

133. 148. 



INDEX. 



175 



Wisconsin, 99, 150. 
Wistar, 108. 
Witzig, 137. 
Woedtke, von, 34. 
Woelpper, Pa. German 
1776, 39- 



Reg. 



Zahm, 3d Ohio Cav., 147. 

Zedwitz, von, 49. 

Ziegler, Pa. Continental Reg. 

32. 
Zinn, 130th Pa., 105. 



THE END. 


















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